Day 110: "Well, on the bright side, they're not cheating on us, right?"

For whatever reasons, I have never found the Farrelly brothers' films to be all that funny.  Yeah there's a few laughs here and there, but they are never consistent chucklefests. Their latest movie, Hall Pass falls into the same monotonous category.  This movie suffers from one of my least favorite storytelling traps: The Sitcom Syndrome.  What this is, essentially, involves married couples where the husbands are complete, unabashed morons, and the wives are unrepentant, know-it-all bitches.  The men can do no right, nor do they have the capacity to thanks, mostly to their stupidity, and the women harp on the men for being stupid, and punish them mercilessly for any perceived misstep, no matter how inconsequential.  It is a formula that has been around for years, and it p**ses me off to no end, no matter the medium.  Why is it so difficult to write a comedy where the couples are equally intelligent and the laughs aren't somebody's fault.  But I digress.  Hall Pass is the story of two husbands who, due to their wives feeling slighted, are given one week "off" from their marriages.  This should be hysterical, instead, the audience is treated to the men making fools of themselves, and the women looking like vindictive nags.  I could have ignored this in it's half-hour incarnations on local television instead of dealing with it for an hour and change.

Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis are the unfortunate grooms in this tragedy.  Christina Applegate and Jenna Fischer (who looked a long way from the pasty Pam on The Office) are the wives.  To be perfectly honest, my favorite actor in the thing was Stephen Merchant, the British actor who supplied the voice for one of my favorite video game characters (Wheatley from Portal 2).  He played another hen-pecked husband, but played it so unreservedly and loose that he came off as the most natural of the lot.

A bad comedy with a life lesson best left learned on one's own, Hall Pass was a real stinker.  I enjoy comedys, but I'd almost rather watch a movie from the Mitchell brothers than the Farrelly brothers.  Skip it, it's not worth the time.  4.5/10.

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!