Inexplicably, I went into Hall Pass ignorant of the fact that it was a Farrelly Bros. (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber) movie. If I’d known, I would have been mentally prepared for the onslaught—there is no other word to describe it—of offensive, crude, distasteful and wholly inappropriate humor that was to come. There are moments in this film that would make Judd Apatow blush.

Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) are best friends who have been married to their wives for as long as they can remember. With young children and routine suffocating their spontaneity and their men exhibiting signs of “greener grass” syndrome, wives Maggie and Grace (Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate) come up with an audacious plan: remove the taboo and you remove the obsession. For one week, Rick and Fred get a “hall pass,” an exemption from their matrimonial vows to do anything (and anyone) they want, no questions asked. We men operate under the collective delusion that we’re all swashbuckling Adonises, but ultimately, the great many of us are all talk, something our wives know all too well.

You know exactly where Hall Pass is going even before it begins. Clearly this is the sort of film in which our main character, upon finally getting what he thinks he wants, realizes he already has everything he needs and races back to the comfortable sanctuary of kith and kin. The humor of the film then, is derived from the journey and not the destination—the pathetic and awkward situations that reveal how the men’s expectations and image of themselves are completely, and uproariously, out of sync with reality. There are moments in this film that will make you squirm in your seat in embarrassment.

Now dethroned by the new purveyors of sophomoric raunchy humor (Judd Apatow and Co.), the Farrelly Bros. seem to have turned their careers into a game of cinematic one-upmanship. They do not limit their humor, visual and otherwise, to sex, but to all things vulgar, including not one but two instances of scat. They know their male nudity-averse American audience so well, they include a scene certain to make even the most hardcore nudist turn away in shame. The line that is crossed is not simply one of basic decency, but fundamental comedy as well—we laugh less at what’s on screen and more at our own reaction to it.

When it comes to the bedroom, our protagonists yearn for desire over duty, admittedly an admirable and completely relatable aspiration. In this way, Hall Pass tries to have its lewd cake and eat its respectable morality too. While this attempt to live in both worlds works on a purely superficial level only, one gets the impression that the latter exists only so that the filmmakers have an excuse to engage in the former.

© Copyright 2011 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly
Starring: Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate, Nicky Whelan, Stephen Merchant, Larry Joe Campbell, Richard Jenkins, Alexandra Daddario
Rated R for crude and sexual humor throughout, language, some graphic nudity and drug use.
Running Time: 105 minutes