HALL PASS (2011, Blu-ray released June 14, 2011 – MSRP $35.99)
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Ah, the drudgery of married life. Sick of dull routine and faking your way through intimate moments? Has the spark dimmed a little? Perhaps you need a hall pass — A week off from your marriage. During that week, maybe you should just rent Hall Pass.
The Farrelly brothers, who brought you There’s Something About Mary and Kingpins, return with their latest Warner Brothers release, starring Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis. Wilson plays a just-prior-to 40 suburban father of three realizing that his life hasn’t turned out to be the drunken eighties fantasy he thought it would be. Along for the ride is SNL funny-man, Sudeikis, as the irreverent best friend who always says whatever passes through his head, sans-filter. They manage to get a week’s respite from their respective marriages and they’re determined to live it up. Let the wild times commence! …sort of.
The casting for this film is excellent, however, from early on it is apparent that the roles of the male leads should have been reversed. Sudeikis is much better suited to the role of the “straight man” and he definitely shows up for work, on-point and energetic …Wilson, not so much. Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate are their wives, proving that there is another side to the hall pass experiment. The husbands are pathetic, ogling and desperate, sex starved children who the “clueless” wives somehow forgot they married.
There is no fault to be found with the technical aspects of this disc. The AVC encoded 1080p transfer is sharp and texturally detailed, with rich colors. Contrast is on the money and blacks are well defined, never masking detail. Sound wise, it’s mostly center-speaker-dialoguey stuff, but it comes through loud and clear. The soundscape of the dts-HD MA 5.1 track covers it all: Precise and clear sound and plenty of atmospherics that enhance scenes, as they should.
Hall Pass, the Enlarged Version Combo Pack sounds big, but the joke is…it’s not very. “Enlarged” means that there is an additional six minutes in the runtime of a film that’s already too long. There is a DVD and digital copy also included.
The included special features are meager too. One deleted scene and a two-minute gag reel that’s short on actual laughs. Both offered in HD, these two extras (and the entire film) are lacking a commentary track from the Farrelly’s, production staff or performers. Ever-present is the WB BD-Live functionality (on the Blu-ray disc) linking your internet-enabled device/console to previews, offers and the WB Store.
Included with the combo pack is a coupon from Warner Brothers offering $20 off the purchase of Green Lantern: Rise of The Manhunters videogame when purchased with certain WB blu-ray titles. Also, featured is an ad for the WB Insider Rewards. A new membership-based service that offers WB fans free stuff including discs and downloads of movies and games. There are exclusive sweepstake entries that can lead to special event invites and VIP studio tours as well.
The hit-and-miss cycle continues with the Farrelly brothers’ Hall Pass. There are plenty of short gags that will make you laugh and some really uncomfortable truths to make you squirm in your seat, but the film is far from hilarious, unfortunately. It will most likely have you asking, “May I be excused?”
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