Hall Pass

Starring: Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, & Christina Applegate

Rating: 1 1/2 out of 5 stars

Thanks to this film, the term, "Hall Pass", became part of the modern urban vernacular, and while the term was a big success, the movie was not. For some reason, Hollywood film makers continue to think that Owen Wilson is funny, and maybe he is, but personally, I don't see it. I usually just wind up feeling sorry for whatever loser character he's portraying. In this film, Wilson and Jason Sudeikis play two guys who have been married awhile, and are starting to get bored. After seeing mutual friends of theirs divorce, the couples worry that they're headed down the same path. Thanks to some friendly advice from Joy Behar, the wives decide that the men should get a week off from marriage to do what they want, and the rest of the film, follows their antics in trying to pick up women after being out of the game for such a long time. The premise of the film isn't terrible and usually, Jason Sudeikis is pretty funny, but Hall Pass falls flat on it's face. This is supposed to be a comedy, so why does it take nearly an hour for the story to get to the point? By the time the guys are shopping for dates, I was bored and pretty much done with this film. In the second hour, the film does get a little better, but not nearly enough. Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis are just two very different types of comedic actors and their styles didn't mesh well at all. If anything their antics together were more stupid than funny, and if there's one thing I can't stand when it comes to comedy, it's stupidity that leads nowhere. It was a good idea, but the writing wasn't very good, the actors didn't mesh, and the situations just weren't that extreme or funny. Hall Pass is just another forgettable film that fails to live up to expectations.