Rude dudes

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/02/2011 (5342 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LOS ANGELES – Eleven years before the hit 2009 comedy The Hangover discovered R-rated comedies could yield gold, fraternal filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farrelly had tapped that vein with their raunch classic There’s Something About Mary.

Hall Pass may have been green-lit due to the success of The Hangover, given that it too is about guys straying from the bounds of respectable behaviour. But it’s a movie well within the Farrellys’ riotous wheelhouse: a thoroughly rude comedy about a couple of married shlubs whose wives effectively revoke their marriage licences for a week, allowing them to fool around for seven full days. The assumption of the wives is that the two horndog hubbies (played by Owen Wilson and Saturday Night Live’s Jason Sudeikis) are so inherently incompetent as pickup artists, they won’t stand a chance.

Unexpectedly, the wives — Jenna Fischer and Christine Applegate — realize the hall pass applies to them, too.

At a press conference, Peter, 54, and younger brother Bobby, 52, say they responded enthusiastically to the original script by Pete Jones.

“We went: Wow. That’s a good idea for a movie,” Bobby says. “A hall pass. A married guy gets a week off.”

“It was hysterical,” Peter says. “We laughed out loud 10 or 12 times and we thought it was something we’d like to get involved in. And then it was a long, long process of rewriting with him because it was a real balancing act to make this movie work.”

“They loved it so much, they rewrote the whole thing,” Jones says with mock bitterness.

Peter Farrelly acknowledges the original script, while funny, didn’t appeal to his wife.

“The guys got the hall pass in the beginning and the women just bit their fingernails, saying, ‘I wonder what’s going on.’ And that didn’t work,” says Peter. “My wife read it and she said, ‘I hate these women.’ She was literally angry with me.”

In the script overhaul, the movie gives time and opportunity for the wives to get as good as they give, as it were.

“This is a guy concept, but the women win,” Peter says. “They win across the board. They get to do more than the guys do with the hall pass and the guys come back humbled and trying to please them.

“It had to be that way for it to work. Women really had to go for it. Ultimately, it’s a chick flick.”

“You would often say that to me, that we’re making Mystic Pizza here,” deadpans Wilson.

In taking a job for the Farrellys, Wilson is following in the footsteps of friends and co-stars such as Ben Stiller and Jack Black, while eschewing the more conventional male romantic leads that might come his way.

It’s a brother thing, Wilson says.

“It comes from growing up with brothers,” Wilson says. (His siblings are actors Luke and Andrew Wilson.) “I relate to a lot of the humour in that, so maybe that’s what I responded to.”

But the experience of making the film wasn’t a rowdy frat party, says Fischer (The Office), who plays Wilson’s wife.

“When you’re like a little kid and you’re daydreaming about what moviemaking might be like, what you’re daydreaming about is a Farrelly brothers movie,” she says. “Their set is so fun and so easy, it made me feel like how I’d always wanted to feel on a movie set, so it was just a total pleasure.

“And luckily, I didn’t have to do anything too insane.”

Fischer, 36, the only woman on the press-conference podium, is apparently the voice of sanity when a question comes up about whether married couples might actually consider the hall-pass concept as conducive to a happy marriage.

“It’s a horrible idea. Are you kidding?” Fischer says. “It’s a wonderful premise for a film. It’s a horrible practical idea for your life. Don’t do it.”

 

 

 

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

MoviePreview

Hall Pass

— Starring Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis

— Opens next Friday