Australia's Best Movie Magazine

Film reviews

Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

search the site

Enter search term:

newsletter

Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter

Enter search term:

Hall Pass (Film)

by Annette Basile | March 02, 2011 13:04 | Edited March 03, 2011 22:10

Weighed down by a shallow premise, cringe-worthy gags and mixed performances, this ends up one big, boring disappointment.

They might be comfortably married with children, but Maggie (Jenna Fischer) knows that Rick (Owen Wilson) is being mentally, if not physically, unfaithful. So she offers Rick and his seemingly teenage-level hormones a hall pass - a week off from their marriage; a temporary licence to be single. Best buddy Fred (Saturday Night Live's Jason Sudeikis) scores a hall pass too. Now all these guys have got to do is get lucky...

 

Dick jokes and toilet humour are fine as long as the gags are funny. Here, the jokes are just embarrassing. There are few laughs in the first half of this Farrelly Brothers comedy, but the makers of There's Something About Mary have run out of ideas, and you may run out of patience before the film arrives at its Xeroxed, screwball climax.

 

Wilson has charm to burn but it's wasted here, and Sudeikis's Fred is just a tad too sleazy to like. As their wives, Jenna Fischer (from the US version of The Office) and Christina Applegate seem to be in another movie (a much more serious one), while Australian export Nicky Whelan (TV's Scrubs, Neighbours) plays a character that has no character at all - she's just "the babe". Other supports are a mixed bag, but Stephen Merchant (who co-wrote and co-directed the original The Office with Ricky Gervais) is the only real ray of comic hope as Gary, one of Rick's all-male posse.

 

Writer/directors Bobby and Peter Farrelly made a loud entrance with the silly but funny Dumb And Dumber back in '94. Movies like the underrated Shallow Hal planted interesting ideas amongst the laughs. Here, they wrap a crude comedy around a standard set of values - nothing wrong with that, it's just boring.

 

It has its moments but Hall Pass doesn't even qualify as a guilty pleasure.