Parents' Guide to

Hall Pass

By S. Jhoanna Robledo, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Farrellys' film about infidelity has both raunch and heart.

Movie R 2011 106 minutes
Hall Pass Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 15+

Based on 18 parent reviews

age 5+

Not inappropriate at all

Great movie not bad at all 5 year olds will love it and grow up wanting a hall pass.
age 18+

Modern movies kill me even by their own standards

I think the hot tube scene in this movie is abosulty and x rating I don't understand how they can show male genitals hard or soft and still have an r rating it blows my mind . they would never and have never showed female genitalia on the big screen its always coverd up with fake hair oh yeah look it up its the truth or it is to far away to make it out .if the man in the scene had his dick and balls tucked between his legs and all you saw was his pubes I bet nobody would feel like they saw a dick so why do man put up with this shit I could give a shit less about how much nudity is in a movie. But I would at least like to be warned about what I'm about to watch and I would like to see equal representation of female and male genitals in movies because for the past few years it has been deffenatly lopsided

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (18):
Kids say (20):

HALL PASS is a foul-mouthed, raunchy, ridiculous, sometimes gross, and inevitably funny movie. It goes all out with jokes inspired by bodily functions gone awry and situations played strictly and outrageously for laughs. In enough moments, it manages to carry it all off, primarily because the humor is so brazen that you're shocked into submission (though one particular scene involving full-frontal nudity is just on this side of too much). But there are also plenty of groan-worthy scenes that could just have easily been left on the cutting room floor. The tired, sexist jokes about wives should have been relegated there, too, as well as one (or two or three) scatological jokes.

Without Wilson, this comedy would be insufferable; somehow, he makes it sort of likeable. The actor -- who has played enough eternal-bachelors-gone-good -- now does doting dad and distracted husband quite well. His transformation actually seems plausible. But as funny as he is, Sudeikis' Fred is overdone: He's a callous, crass, hormone-driven character who doesn't quite come across as genuinely changed when his arc comes to its (formulaic) end. The movie could also have done with fewer predictably quirky friends and engineered-to-be-nutty moments. Credit goes to the Farrelly brothers for handling the wives' response to the hall pass with some complexity, but in the end, the movie doesn't quite earn a proverbial pass for its transgressions.

Movie Details

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