If only everything in the world came with a hall pass...

Movie: Hall Pass
SeaOfScenes Rating: FUCK YOU!!!!

Let's face it, in today's society, there are much too many bad movies out there. But just because a movie is bad, objectively speaking, doesn't mean one can't enjoy it. In fact, I like to categorize bad movies into 3 categories. The first ones are the movies that I objectively know is bad, but enjoy anyway because I had so much fun watching it. The best examples I can think of are Transformers (the 1st one, not the sequel), G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, and Ninja Assassin. Although critics hated those movies, I had a lot of fun watching them, and I'd watch them again when I'm bored. The second category consists of movies that are so bad to the point that they are almost good, and I end up having a good time by laughing at how bad the movie was. The best example I can think of is M. Night Shyamalan's latest joke of a movie, The Last Airbender, in which everything was done so poorly that it was almost as if Mr. Shyamalan was trying make a comedy, much likes Team America: World Police, just to point out how poorly made some movies are. Then there is the third category, which consists of movies that just shouldn't have been made in the first place. These movies just piss me off while I'm watching them, and make me feel like I have wasted a few hours of my life that I will never get back.

Hall Pass is a prime example of a movie in the third category.

The storyline of the movie follows two married, middle-aged men, Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) who are given a "hall pass" from their wives to do whatever they want for a week, which includes having sex with other women. In other words, the movie is just another version of last summer's comedy hit The Hangover, about the stupidity of adult men. The difference however, is that the two men in Hall Pass, unlike those in The Hangover, are married with children. Therefore, while I can have a great laugh at the stupidity of grown men engaging in self destructive, inappropriate activities of 4 single men still in their youth, I find it extremely difficult when the joke is on two men with young children, who will inevitably look at their fathers as role models, engaging in similarly destructive and inappropriate activities.

Fans of the movie will undoubtedly argue that I missed the point of the movie, because at the end, the two men realized how stupid they were being, and went back to their wives and children. Perhaps they have a point, but I would argue that the point of movie was less in how the two men realized that their families were the most important things in the lives, and more about using the hall pass that the two men got as an excuse to make extremely inappropriate sexual jokes.

For example, in one scene, Rick gets stuck in a public bathtub, and two completely nude men enter the scene to help him. I'm usually fine with nudity, but the camera then chooses to focus entirely on the penis, filling the entire screen with the image of the male genitalia. Fans of the movie can once again argue that I am being homophobic, that if the focus were on a pair of boobs, I would find it awesome and gawk at it until I start drooling. My counterargument: I would not gawk at it even if the focus were on a pair of boobs (which are shown in a later scene), and even if I did, filling the screen with a pair of boobs would not make it a good movie. There exists an entire genre for these kind of scenes; it's called pornography.

The lines in the movie were equally as mindless and offensive. If movies like Borat are meant to test the limits of how much the average American can withstand offensive behaviors of a foreigner, movies like Hall Pass are meant to test the limits of how much the audience can withstand mindless and offensive jokes. Although there were some funny lines in the movie that gave me a chuckle here and there, those lines were quickly forgotten as they were surrounded by garbage ones such as a group of guys asking each other "which one would you choose, making out with a guy or having a guy blow you?" followed by "hmmm that's a tough one, how long would I have to make out with the guy?"

It's too bad that in real life, we don't get hall passes for anything besides letting us use the restroom without getting into trouble in elementary school. I, for one, would really love a hall pass to be able to swing my fist at producers of the movie for making a movie that wasted a little over 1.5 hours of my life.

I watched the movie for free (legally), but if I could go into the past and be given the choice, I would pay the full price of $13 NOT to watch this movie.