Parents' Guide to Hall Pass

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.