Hall Pass needs a free checkup

Ever been married and feel like you just need a break? If you believe this movie, it’s normal, and taking a week off of wedded bliss can be a healthy alternative. After all, what’s the worst thing that can happen after a few extramarital affairs, right?

Thank goodness that Hollywood and the Farrelly brothers are right there to bust this myth open for us, otherwise who knows what might happen in real life. Hall Pass is a comedy for the AshleyMadison.com crowd, with the word ‘comedy’ being defined loosely. It is meant to provoke laughter somehow. There is precious little mirth, however.

In the middle of pristine middle class New England, two otherwise normal and reasonably successful and happy men find themselves in a somewhat precarious position: two wives have become fed up with their husbands always gawking at other women. Maybe their sex lives at home have gotten tired, with kids and routines getting in the way of romance and spontaneity, but both couples soon find themselves at a crisis point.

These two women grant their husbands a ‘hall pass,’ a week off of marriage. They justify this with an entry-level understanding of reverse psychology — that their men only want what they cannot have. Give them permission to get whatever suits their fancy and they won’t want it anymore.

And that’s how this crass and offensive ‘comedy’ sets off, with its sights set on the big pot of golden laughter at the end of the humour rainbow. We are meant to believe that men are just thoughtless dogs endlessly panting and drooling at every sexual prospect and that women abide. Chalk this one up to a film about men behaving badly and women who give them permission to do so as a way of making them appreciate their marriages again.

The Farrelly brothers used to have some decent street cred when it came to irreverence. Anybody still remember There’s Something About Mary? It was a phenomenon of great setups, payoffs and gales of laughter. It was a trendsetter that set the tone for the last decade of R-rated adult comedies even though it still held fast to a modicum of respectability.

Where Mary was intellectual childishness, Hall Pass is brash and boorish. Tell a tale about sexual indiscretion, throw in a few scenes of gratuitous nudity and unpleasant bodily functions and you’ve got all the ingredients for a mediocre-at-best Owen Wilson film. It’s nice to see him on his own and not tethered to a subpar Ben Stiller project, but couldn’t he have done something better than this?

The Farrelly fellas are past their prime. There are only a scant few shiny spots on this grotesque heap. The actors’ comedic timing is lacking. Golden opportunities for sustained laughter were obviously missed, like when Wilson is testing out pages of icebreakers on an unwilling female audience at a bar. That could have gone on much longer and to better overall effect.

The men were embarrassing and awkward in their actions and the audience felt much the same. Richard Jenkins was the highlight here, in another Oscar-worthy performance but he doesn’t show up until late in the game. Too bad you can’t pay half price to watch the last half of the movie because this one gets better and tighter near the end.