"Hall Pass," which opens today, is about two middle-aged upscale-suburban married guys (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudekis) getting into hijinks during a weeklong "hiatus" from marriage (or, rather, from marital-fidelity) bestowed by their fed-up wives (summary of charges: they check out other women). The logic at play is that married men "romanticize" their single days, and being reminded how difficult the dating scene is - and how out-of-practice they are - will bludgeon the guys into appreciation of of homebody-hood.
Dopey premise, to be sure, especially when you remember that no mainstream comedy would DARE let the story go in any direction other than "monogamy: It's the bee's kness!" But it's got it's moments, and it's a step back up to "average" for the Farrelly Bros. after "Heartbreak Kid." Except... something about it just rang incredibly false to me, and I'm a little annoyed that it took this long for me to pinpoint it.
SPOILERS ON!
Okay, so... wicked-shocker: They don't really get much action, and 90% of the comedy is seeing them strike out in bars, clubs, resturaunts, massage-parlors, whatever. Now, admittedly, it's about what you'd expect from two married suburbanites trying to jump back into the game... but for some reason I wasn't buying it. At all. I couldn't really explain it, and then it hit me (literally) a minute or two ago: The internet doesn't seem to exist in this movie.
Think about it: This premise has ZERO verisimilitude in the age of the online-hookup. These guys aren't trying to have affairs, they're openly just going for a succession of one-night-stands. And they aren't exactly paupers - these are well-off dudes with big houses in the burbs. What the FUCK are they doing on the club scene!? "Married men seeking discreet quickie" is their predicament in the movie - but in real life it's the near-literal selling point of hundreds of extremely lucrative businesses. But it NEVER comes up once in the movie! (Unless I missed it.)
Am I nuts, or is this up there with doing a present-day "lost in the woods" movie and not even addressing cell-phones? I mean, show of hands - if any married 40something guy you know got this kind of "Pass" from his wife in the real world... his first (or at least within-first-five) "moves" is to get on the equivalent of Craigslist, no?
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