SHIT PASS

Ok, well first of all my feelings of shame at having sat through this tofurkey, make me feel like I need to justify why I went to see this in the first place! Basically it was playing at a Drive-In and we were caught up in the excitement of the Drive-In movie experience. We wanted a light hearted flick that we wouldn’t have to concentrate on too much. And boy did we ever get that.

Additionally it had allegedly been reviewed in a local paper as moving beyond its clichéd premise. And it is at this point that I should point out that the story was as utterly hackneyed as is possible to get. At no point whatsoever did it even dare to suggest it might move away from its thoroughly leaden and predictable direction

I should point out also, that I am a fan of the Farrelly Brothers masterpiece – Dumb and Dumber. I am also fond of There’s Something About Mary. But their early promise has curdled in the intervening years and here we are left with this wretched affront to cinema.

The plot – such as it is – involves Owen Wilson and his odious best friend receiving a ‘week off’ from their respective marriages in order to try and seduce women and supposedly get all of their letching out of their system. Cue two tedious hours of shittery, with lots of awful ‘the difference between men and women’ type humour, the likes of which you would ordinarily see spewing from the fat mouth of the worst kind of ‘Saturday-night-on-ITV’ comedian. The kind of lowest common denominator mirth that appeals to divs because ‘hey my wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend does that too! It’s so true”. You get the picture. Then, after the movie is done insulting you with the worst kind of Michael McIntyre jokes, it devolves into some utterly saccharine ‘we love our wives after all’ bullshit and you sit there feeling nauseous because you just wasted 10 dollars and a valuable part of your 30’s, that are just whizzing by at light speed, and can ill afford to be wasted on dreck like this.

In the spirit of full disclosure I should admit that it was not entirely unfunny. There were one or two amusing moments – such as Owen Wilson’s cack handed attempt at a chat-up line. The movie also ends with a superb Stephen Merchant sequence which I won’t say anything about lest I spoil the only pleasure this movie has to offer. My advice, if you MUST go see this, is just pop in at the end and watch the last 2 minutes.

Talking of Stephen Merchant, whilst it is indeed nice to see him getting some recognition, he is well and truly slumming it here. And what’s more, he’s not the only one. Owen Wilson co-wrote Rushmore for goodness sake! The same man who is partly responsible for the peerless The Royal Tenenbaums also starred in this piece of shit. Just let your brain process that one for a second, and try not to implode.

Also worthy of note is the presence of Leon from Curb Your Enthusiasm, which on the face of it, ought to be dynamite having him in a Farrelly Brothers movie. Disappointingly he is given nothing to do and after a while you just plain forget he’s in it.

Finally we come to Jason Sudeikis as the sidekick/best friend character. I have no idea who he is. Never seen him in anything before, but IMDB reliably informs me that he was in 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live. Frankly he is a disaster. He simply does not have the charisma to pull it off. Where he should be at least slightly sympathetic in order to get you board for his crude gags, he is merely obnoxious.  One hundred percent dislikeable and he never gets back on track.

You can tell how appalling it is going to be by the movie poster. In Drew Struzan’s book (which I hope to review here imminently) he laments the loss of the movie poster as a piece of artwork, replaced as it has been, by a series of floating heads put together by a suit with Photoshop. The poster to Hall Pass is the embodiment of this argument. I mean just LOOK at it! Look at how little effort or thought has been put into this poster. I mean it is just absolute fucking NOTHING. And lo, so is the movie.

Ultimately I don’t suppose you can criticise a film for doing pretty much what you expect of it. But you can certainly criticise all the jerkweeds who conspired to have it made in the first place. The fact that this film can be made at all boggles the mind and if you’ve ever seen Idiocracy then you will know the World has just moved one step closer to seeing ‘Ass’ actually get made!

IMDB: Hall Pass