Hall Pass

Directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly

(R)

**

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It’s not pretty watching the creators of There’s Something About Mary straining to live up to their “rudely comic younger selves,” said Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter. Thirteen years after that landmark hit, brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly had a chance at a new classic when they cast Owen Wilson and Saturday Night Live’s Jason Sudeikis as two juvenile 40-somethings whose fed-up wives grant them seven-day waivers from their fidelity vows. But the Farrellys “seem fatally torn between making a grown-up farce with a heartfelt message” and delivering the gross-out gags that made them famous, leaving this film “in an unsatisfying, vaguely depressing no-man’s-land.” Hall Pass at least cares enough about its characters to make its comedy resonate, said Keith Phipps in the A.V. Club. “The best gags involve the terror just beneath the surface” of the guys’ exhilarating freedom, and it helps that their wives are given the chance to voice their midlife frustrations too. Balancing “male self-mockery, social satire, and pure vulgarity” isn’t easy, said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. So far, it’s a balance that most of the Farrellys’ imitators can’t manage at all.