In Hall Pass, Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis are given permission to take one week off from their marriages. They dream of a frenzy of wildly fun, sex-filled bachelor hedonism where they gorge themselves on a “buffet of ass.” In reality, they realise that they are now middle-aged men and their young desired conquests no longer find their outdated chat-up lines and desperate obsession with sex appealing. Which begs the question: at what point did the Farrelly Brothers take a Hall Pass from their career?
Hall Pass actually begins promisingly enough, with Wilson, Sudeikis and their posse of oddball sexually frustrated friends coming up with some great, outrageous gags. But when the highlights of a film occur within the first half an hour and consist of conversations about “big mouthed vaginas” and Sudeikis getting caught masturbating in his car, it feels less like a return to fine Dumb And Dumber form and merely proof that Judd Apatow can bank on a Superbad sequel working in 20 years.
The conceit isn’t a bad one, and the men’s insecure mid-life crisis fuelled humiliations are fun to watch. But it’s when the Farrelly Brothers abandon the jokes in favour of predictable themes that they lose their way. For as the wives make statements like, “it’s a woman’s job to fake everything” and the men’s “marriage is wonderful” epiphany comes not from love, but the realisation that single life is hard, their moralising conclusion remains unconvincing.
Because the Farrelly Brothers don’t really care about romance. They care about poo jokes and hash brownies and Stephen Merchant’s brilliant post-credit mental meanderings. They’re merely trying to shoehorn in enough false sentiment so that the dates of their target audience will forgive references to bowel-emptying sneezes and fake cunnilingus.
But sentiment can’t be convincingly faked, and hall passes can’t last forever. Back to the drawing board, bros.