Hall Pass - Bobby & Peter Farrelly

It’s been over a decade since There’s Something About Mary, and the Farrelly brothers are still scratching at the door, desperate to return to their former prestige. But it seems that the inventors of the raunchy bro-medy have lost their touch, and after a string of flops—The Heartbreak Kid, Stuck on You and the pilot for canceled TV sitcom Unhitched, to name a few—their latest venture is just another nail in the coffin.

The first problem arises from the film’s contrived premise: Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) have hotter-than-they-deserve wives yet are unhappy with their sex lives, spending their days clumsily checking out younger women. Fed up, their wives (Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate) grant them a week-long pass from marriage. The women know that these pasty, middle-aged men have about as much a chance of getting with these girls as pigs have of flying. So the men spend a week with their buddies scouring the local Applebee’s for loose ladies. Meanwhile the women head to Cape Cod where they spark some heat with a college baseball team.

In a word, the film was boring. Where Hall Pass lacks creativity, which is almost everywhere, the Farrelly brothers plug in crude jokes and bodily fluids. It’s not even clever—like Cameron Diaz’s classic hair gel mix up—just more of uninspired bathroom humor. In other words, when the s*** hits the fan, it really hits the bathroom wall. And it’s not pretty. Or funny.

The only saving grace is the appearance of Rick and Fred’s older friend and love doctor, Coakley (Richard Jenkins), who despite his age is a sex-god to the ladies and a hero to the men. In the most noteworthy scenes of the film, Coakley tries to teach these desperate men how to pick up women. Jenkins inevitably steals the show, delivering his lines with a grace and comedic timing that the rest of the film lacks.

Hall Pass is like The Hangover, minus the kidnapping, the tiger, the stripper-marriage and the lost groom. Take a pass on this one.