Critical Mass: ‘Hall Pass’
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
It’s been a rough road for Peter and Bobby Farrelly since their lofty career peak in 1998 with ‘There’s Something About Mary.’ After Steven Zeitchik recounted their careers since that time here, we’re left to assess their latest offering, ‘Hall Pass,’ and wonder if the critics have decided to stop beating up on them.
As it turns out, not yet.
Times critic Betsy Sharkey panned the movie and in the process revealed just how far her tolerance for shocking humor would go. She writes that the film ‘continues that creative slide into everyday crude (because watching a guy poop in a sand trap is neither clever nor funny).’ And though she may have written off the film, she hasn’t written off the Farrellys. She says, ‘For all the off-colors they wave, the Farrellys have a winning sentimental side too. It’s time for them to get past their Peter Pan potty-mouth days.’
The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis is equally unimpressed with the Farrellys’ bodily function humor. But she’s even more unimpressed with the primitive look and feel of their movies: ‘They’re oblivious as well to camera movement, blocking, lighting and all the filmmaking rest, remaining stubbornly visually unevolved, the monotony of the two shots, over-the-shoulder shots and master shots the visual equivalent of bad minimalist music.’
And though Dargis pointed out the film’s more troubling gender themes, Slate’s Dana Stevens goes all the way with it (and frequently apologizes to her mother for having to describe the film’s cruder passages in the process). She writes in explanation to her poor, sainted mother: ‘ ‘Hall Pass’ traffics in a brand of misogyny so puzzling that it can only be analyzed by examining the film’s raunchy jokes at close range.’ And examine them, she does. Slate’s review could probably safely be considered the red-band version of the review, dirty lingo and all.
But not all reviews were bad, though it won’t surprise you to learn that the film’s few defenders were men. When it comes to boobs, poop and booze, guys just can’t seem to rise above it.
Salon.com’s Andrew O’Heir acknowledges that the Farrelly brand of humor isn’t new or fresh anymore, and there are younger directors who have surpassed them this century, but ‘there is a balance to the Farrellys’ comedy -- a balance, let’s say, of male self-mockery, social satire and pure vulgarity -- that most imitators cannot manage, and they consistently sympathize with the long-suffering women who get stuck with the ludicrous man-children in their movies. More to the point, they’re funny, often savagely so.’
The Farrellys’ most positive reviews come from their home region: the Northeast. Boston Globe reviewer Wesley Morris starts his review with perhaps the most over-the-top praise for the brother filmmakers: ‘Bobby and Peter Farrelly have brought water to the arid desert currently calling itself American film comedy. It’s a drink spiked with enough crudeness to cause a nasty bout of dysentery.’
And in the Farrellys’ hometown of Providence, the Providence Journal reviewer, Michael Janusonis, seems equally smitten with their gross-out gags: ‘ ‘Hall Pass’ can get marginally sleazy, although true to their character, the Farrellys always wind up softening the edges so that even when the film deals in potentially explosive behavior, it’s done with a nod and a wink.’
-- Patrick Kevin Day
