BY GENE TRIPLETT

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Peter and Bobby Farrelly say they’re close enough to a final line-up of cast members for their Three Stooges biopic to poke ‘em in the eyeballs.
At least that’s what the writing, producing and directing team of brothers  were hinting at during a press conference in February, while promoting their lastest comedy, “Hall Pass,” starring Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis.
“Yeah, we’ve been working on (the Stooges project) for about 10 years, maybe longer,” Bobby Farrelly told reporters who were gathered at the Four

Bobby and Peter Farrelly

 Seasons Hotel on Grammy Awards weekend.
“We finally have just gotten it into preproduction, so we are gonna shoot it a little later this spring.”
The on-again, off-again casting rumors have included such names as Jim Carrey as Curly Howard, Benicio Del Toro as Moe Howard and Sean Penn as Larry Fine.
Then it was reported that Carrey and Penn had dropped out. Paul Giamatti was mentioned as a second choice to play Larry, and Farrelly regular Richard Jenkins reportedly has signed on in some capacity. To play Shemp, perhaps?
The Farrellys have long credited the mid-20th century Vaudeville and film comedy trio as major influences on their careers, which have produced such outrageous comedies as “There’s Something About Mary,” “Dumb and Dumber” and “Me, Myself & Irene.”
“No question they were a big influence on us,” Bobby Farrelly said. “We grew up watching ‘em. We’d come home from school and watch them on TV and laugh. These were guys from the 1930s and ’40s. I don’t know, we just felt like that type of slapstick humor that they did was very timeless and fun and we want to try to recreate it.”
However, the brothers still weren’t ready to name any names yet.
“Right now we are diligently casting it, trying to find out who the right guys are,” Bobby Farrelly said. “It’s not an easy job because you know even the great actors might struggle with those particular roles. So we’re looking at everyone and probably will have it cast in about a month or so. We are gonna make it and we’re very excited about it.”
Chances are it could be Stooge-pendous. N’yuk, n’yuk, n’yuk.

Listed on wimgo Movies under Comedy

BY GENE TRIPLETT

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — To hear the cast and directors of “Hall Pass” tell it, there’s as much hilarity happening off-camera as on when the Farrelly brothers are making a movie.

“There were more kind of, like, wrap parties on this movie than normal movies,” Owen Wilson recalled.

“A weekly wrap party,” Jenna Fischer affirmed.

“Prewrap wrap parties,” Jason Sudeikis elaborated.

“There was a lot,” Wilson said.

“More games were invented,” Sudeikis marveled, glancing down the long table at Peter and Bobby Farrelly. “You guys could have your own Olympics with the (stuff) you guys do. Like the birthday contest.”

“There was a dice game with the giant dice that you found,” Fischer said.

And Sudeikis described a basketball game using a football to shoot hoops. No easy dribbling there.

“That’s where I made most of my money back,” Bobby Farrelly said with a smile.

“You were really good at it,” Sudeikis admitted.

All these happy memories were coming out during a freewheeling news conference at the Four Seasons Hotel with Wilson, Fischer, Sudeikis and the Farrellys promoting the new comedy “Hall Pass.”

Like most comedies written and directed by the Farrelly Brothers (“Dumb & Dumber,” “There’s Something About Mary,” “Me, Myself & Irene”), it’s loaded with irreverent, outrageous and often off-color humor dealing with life, love, sex and bodily functions.

“Hall Pass” is no exception, incorporating all those elements into a story about best buddies Rick and Fred (Wilson and Sudeikis), two longtime married guys who love their wives, but, like a lot of men, just can’t keep from scoping out every other woman who crosses their field of vision.

Fed up with their spouses’ wandering eyes, the wives (Fischer and Christina Applegate) take drastic measures to revitalize their marriages, granting their husbands a “hall pass” — one week of freedom to do whatever they want with no questions asked. Let them find out what they’re missing.

It all seems too good to be true, but the boys quickly learn that the single life they imagine has nothing to do with reality. For example: The first places they choose to “cruise chicks” are the bars at Applebee’s and Chili’s — not exactly swinging singles hot spots.

Someone asked Wilson what establishments he’d recommend for meeting women.

“Olive Garden,” he said.

“Chuck E. Cheese,” Sudeikis suggested.

“What about Bed Bath & Beyond?” Fischer said. “For real. There’s a ton of women there.”

“Where?” a bewildered Peter Farrelly asked.

“Bed Bath & Beyond,” Fischer repeated. “Target. Go where women go. They’re all there. The cosmetics counter.”

“Whole Foods,” Peter Farrelly said, getting into the spirit of things.

“Let’s go to Trader Joe’s,” Wilson said.

“Bring deodorant, though,” Sudeikis cautioned.

Apparently, the hilarity just keeps on coming whenever this bunch gets together. Even a news conference becomes a party.

But for the film, the Farrellys wanted Wilson to play against the hip, carefree party animal image he’s flaunted in such films as “Wedding Crashers” and “You, Me and Dupree.” That required, among other things, a drastic trimming of his blond locks and a change in wardrobe style.

“I think what you guys (the Farrelly brothers) had in mind when you talked about me playing the character, was kind of having a real look for the guy,” Wilson said.

“And I remember my older brother (Andrew), who was in the movie, coming to Atlanta where we filmed and just seeing me in my wardrobe. He’s like, ‘You look so bad.’ Just putting on the clothes, it just made you feel like, ‘God, I’ve got no game.’ … You know, when you’ve got pleated jeans and these kind of orthopedic shoes, you don’t feel very sexy.”

Travel and accommodations provided by Warner Bros.

Listed on wimgo Movies under Comedy

The Farrelly brothers are back for another raunchy romp replete with irreverent, outrageous, colossally crude humor in “Hall Pass.”

This time they explore the dirty mind of the seven-year-itchy married man with Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis (“Saturday Night Live”) as Rick and Fred, respectively, two guys who can’t keep their eyes from wandering whenever shapely young women cross their sightlines. Trouble is, they’re not very subtle about it in front of their wives, who finally resort to the drastic measure of granting their husbands a “hall pass” — a green light to commit all the adultery they can manage for one whole week, just to get it out of their systems.

Of course, the wives (Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate) are gambling that the boys will quickly learn that the swinging singles world they’re imagining out there has nothing to do with reality, and that they will fail miserably and sheepishly return to the fold, disappointed, contrite and with a renewed appreciation for what they have at home.

The wives have called it right, because the tragically unhip Rick and Fred take the first misguided step of choosing such places as the bars at Applebee’s and Chili’s for “cruising chicks.” It gradually begins to dawn on these born-again bachelors that pickup lines from questionable “how to” sources (“How much does a polar bear weigh? Enough to break the ice! Hi, my name’s Fred, can I buy you a drink?” and “Do you think these bar napkins smell like chloroform?”) and prop helmets (“Because chicks dig motorcycles”) just aren’t fazing their female targets.

The game has changed in their 20-year absence, along with the amount of partying their systems can withstand before they crash-land for the night, and before they know it their allotted week of freedom is running out, with nothing but a series of hangovers, a stoned golf course fiasco and a bruising encounter with a giant jealous boyfriend to show for it.

A conscience-troubled Rick is ready to pack it in anyway, but gung-ho Fred refuses to admit defeat, and their fortunes begin to turn when their old pal Coakley, a legendary, eternal bachelor and “love doctor” (a hilariously straight-faced Richard Jenkins) steps in to teach them his tricks, coaching Rick to take an ongoing flirtation with a gorgeous waitress (Nicky Whelan) to the next level. Fred in turn, takes advantage of a case of mistaken identity to bed somebody’s sexy middle-age aunt (it gets complicated).

But what never occurs to Rick and Fred is that the “hall pass” makes their wives likewise single, and Fred’s wife, Grace (Applegate), persuades Rick’s wife, Maggie (Fischer), that they’re licensed to cut loose as well.

Irreparable damage to both marriages seems imminent as everyone treads on dangerous home-wrecking ground, and along the way there are plenty of opportunities for the co-writing, co-directing team of Peter and Bobby Farrelly to inject the kind of scatological, gross-out gags that made hits such as “There’s Something About Mary” and “Dumb & Dumber” the kind of films that would surely make Beavis and Butt-head’s Top 10.

“Hall Pass” does have some laugh-out-loud moments and even some valid observations on what it takes to make love and marriage last, but the good is all but crushed by groan-inducing sophomoric overload. You may want to shower afterward.

— Gene Triplett

MOVIE REVIEW

“Hall Pass”

R

1:38

2 stars

Starring: Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate, Richard Jenkins, Nicky Whelan.

(Crude and sexual humor throughout, language, some graphic nudity and drug use)

Listed on wimgo Movies under Comedy

NEW YORK – Owen Wilson – with his fractured nose, crooked smile, twinkly blue eyes and tousled blond hair – is every girl’s dream date and every guy’s ideal frat brother.

Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon

Just ask his co-stars in “How Do You Know,” the James L. Brooks romantic comedy in which the laidback Texas native plays a free-spirited, womanizing professional baseball player for the Washington Nationals. They got a unique sample of Wilson’s pixyish charm when they showed up in Washington, D.C. for shooting – literally!

Jack Nicholson, himself a notorious rounder in his day, said he was immediately taken aback by Wilson’s guileless playfulness.

“Well, I didn’t get to do any scenes with Owen, who kills me anyway,” said Nicholson during press interviews, “but the only contact that I had with him was that he called me up when I first got there and he said, ‘Hey, do you want to go out and shoot machine guns?’ I thought, ‘Oh, my God, all these guys think that I’m adventurous.’”

Witherspoon chimed in, “He invited me, too. It’s kind of awesome.”

“The man is charming,” Nicholson said with a rascally shrug of his shoulders.

Wilson, sitting nearby with a Cheshire cat’s grin on his face, confirmed the story.

“I actually did (go out shooting machine guns),” he said. “It was like a friend knew somebody at one of the embassies that had a tennis court. And then when they let us on to play tennis, we found out that they had a machine gun range underneath the embassy, and they took us to shoot on it.”

- Dennis King

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Flanked by a trio of the freshest young actors in contemporary film, Jack Nicholson seems to relish his status as Hollywood’s resident lovable rogue.

Since his heyday as counterculture radical in landmark movies such as “Easy Rider,” “Five Easy Pieces” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Nicholson has lived a high-profile playboy’s life and settled into a kind of elder rebel-emeritus status on screen, burnished by the patina of his bad-boy past and his three acting Oscars.

Jack Nicholson

If there’s a mischievous twinkle in his eyes when he talks about his latest role as a “cuddly shark” in writer-director James L. Brooks’ “How Do You Know,” it is masked by his ubiquitous, signature shades. But when Nicholson talks about working again with Brooks or hanging out and acting with co-stars Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd, there’s a weathered warmth in his voice that belies his hipster cool.

“It’s a privilege to work with Jim. He’s probably one of the best screenwriters in the world, and you just get great material and he can always cast wonderful actors. Just look at us all,” Nicholson said, gesturing grandly to his young co-stars during a press conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Central Park hosted by Columbia Pictures.

With Brooks on one side and Witherspoon, Wilson and Rudd on the other, Nicholson held court in a sense as he talked about Brooks’ new romantic comedy. In it, he plays a deeply flawed father and sharky business mogul trying to balance his love for his son with his instincts for self-preservation. Nicholson’s bond with Brooks goes way back to his Oscar-winning performances in “Terms of Endearment” and “As Good As It Gets,” sandwiched between a memorable turn in “Broadcast News.” (Nicholson’s other Oscar, his first, came for Milos Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1976.)

In “How Do You Know,” Nicholson is essentially in a supporting role – but one that fits him like a tailored suit. He plays Charles, an oily industrialist whose company is under federal investigation for fraud. Unfortunately, blame for Charles’ shady shenanigans falls on his decent but clueless son, George (Rudd), who recently took the corporate reins. As George’s life is falling apart, he stumbles into a romantic triangle with Witherspoon’s Lisa, an Olympic softball player in crisis at the end of her career, and Wilson’s Matty, a playboy pitcher for the Washington Nationals.

For his part, Nicholson’s charmingly caddish Charles occupies a subplot in which he hopes to help his son out of his legal jam while avoiding a lengthy, and well-deserved, prison sentence for himself.

“There are always different things that make parts difficult,” Nicholson said of his raffish character. “I’ve played a lot of bad or semi-bad people and you always have to be on the character’s side. I didn’t have any problem analyzing this character. It wasn’t really the tough part of it for me. I liked playing the father even though he’s not a great father, but I think you can see that he really does care even though he chooses business over his own son. He really didn’t think that he was doing that much wrong. I was a little worried about that myself since I feel like I am a loveable shark. Those are the kinds of things that you have to finesse.”

Brooks said he wrote the character as a personification of a certain kind of predator afoot in America’s financial jungles.

“Everything that’s been going on (in the economy) has been an attack on our personhoods. That shark that you’re talking about is representative of a certain kind of American businessman. I think he’s typical,” Brooks said.

“I am someone who’s obsessive about specifics and detail and I couldn’t pick a business to put up front,” the director continued. “Then I realized that Jack’s character is representative of the whole breed. And also, I realized that so much has gone wrong, and our trust has been eroded to such an extent by the absence of real role models anyplace in our lives, that the last holdout is people needing each other and holding hands and taking it on together. I sort of felt that when I wrote this.”

Nicholson, 73, said Brooks is the kind of director that makes him excited to keep making movies.

“With Jim you have to remember that he writes comedies like nobody else,” the actor said. “I mean, you’re dealing with life, death, business crime, fatherhood, motherhood, all these very serious topics and everything is funny at the same time. It has truth and it’s funny, but what he attacks to begin with is where it’s really distinct if you reviewed it – cancer, news, all this kind of thing. And I know it’s the goal he sets himself. He sets himself very interesting goals.

“Like, I remember the one that I particularly liked was in ‘As Good As It Gets.’ He says, ‘Number one, I want to write a part for the dog.’ He said, ‘I also want (the dog) to get a specific laugh based on language.’ So I mean he just picks out really hard things to do and then it’s supposed to look easy, kind of like Fred Astaire, but where he starts is always amazing to me.”

After a stellar career that has featured the above-mention films as well as era-defining movies such as “The Shining,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” “A Few Good Men,” “The Departed” and “The Bucket List,” Nicholson said he really doesn’t have anything left to prove. So he picks the roles he does take on very carefully.

“I’m kind of a guy that likes to prove things and all my life when I’ve said, ‘I’m so sick of (working),” and everyone always said, ‘Oh, God, man. You couldn’t not work.’ Well, I’m kind of proving them wrong. I read a lot of scripts and so I feel like I do a lot of movies and stuff, but they’re all the same. I like not working. I know that’s hideous, blasphemous, but I really do. I think I’ve started to infect others, young guys. I had a conversation with Leo (DiCaprio) and he said, ‘I love not working.’ I said, ‘See what I mean?’ I don’t really want to infect him.”

So, what does he do when he’s not working?

“It’s a press conference and I like to give great answers, but I just like getting up sometimes between eleven and one,” he said hesitantly. “It’s not movie hours unless you’re doing night movies. I play golf. I have a couple of kids in college and so I’m on the phone a lot. I see my pals. Various women around. Talk to my congressman. Go to funerals.”

What about rooting for his beloved Los Angeles Lakers?

“That’s more of a job,” Nicholson said with that patented bad-boy grin. “I have to be there (at courtside).”

But what is it that he still loves about making movies?

“Travel. Beautiful women. Excellent compatriots. Drinking pals. It’s very exciting. It’s just an exciting business,” Nicholson said. “We’ve all been doing it a while. I think we all get nervous, we get wild and that should be all I say, I think.”

The cosmic question at the heart of James L. Brooks’ latest, appealingly quirky romantic comedy is “How Do You Know.”

Owen Wilson

Although the writer-director of such grown-up comedies as “Broadcast News,” “As Good As It Gets” and “Spanglish” fails to punctuate his latest properly (something to do with an old Hollywood superstition about an ill fate for movies with question marks in their titles), he does offer up some pointed and poignant inquiries into the nature of love, romantic fate and commitment.

“How Do You Know,” like most of Brooks’ so-called “dramadies,” features decent but flawed characters and a messy, loose-ends plotline that aptly reflects modern life with all its funny and heartbreaking imperfections.

Paul Rudd

The unspoken extension of the film’s title query is: how do you know when you’re really, truly in love?

And Brooks employs a well-scrubbed trio of highly likable, dazzlingly photogenic and apparently expensive stars (reported payroll: $50 million) to pursue that question through a thoughtful and complex if meandering narrative.

It all starts as we meet Lisa (Reese Witherspoon, dithering but sexy), an Olympic-caliber softball player who, at 27, is unceremoniously cut from the U.S. national team. Uncertain about her future, and equally uncertain about her romantic fling with playboy Washington Nationals pitcher Matty (Owen Wilson, a charming rascal), Lisa agrees to a quicky blind date with businessman George (Paul Rudd, a likable everyman).

George has just received word that he’s about to be indicted for fraud for some dubious doings at the corporation whose head job he’s just inherited from his wheeler-dealer father Charles (Jack Nicholson playing, well, Jack Nicholson).

Reese Witherspoon

Naturally, the date between these two distracted young people is a disaster. But, something about George’s vulnerability and decency sticks with Lisa. And something about Matty’s guileless honesty and womanizing past leaves her with deep doubts about their relationship. And so an offbeat love triangle develops – Lisa slightly indifferent to prospects of love; Matty willing to settle down with Lisa despite the bounties of his single life; George gently viewing Lisa as a lifeline to sanity.

Meanwhile, in a pithy subplot, George’s morally slippery father struggles to come to grips with his guilt, his horror at going to prison and his love for his clueless and innocent son.

Certainly, Brooks knows how to create memorable, offbeat characters and place them in stories that deliver plenty of smart laughs, along with an undercurrent of social timeliness and heart-tugging drama. As a writer, director and producer, Brooks has won three Oscars (for “Terms of Endearment”) and 18 Emmy Awards (for his work on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Taxi” “The Tracey Ullman Show” and “The Simpsons”) essentially doing just that.

But his stories are hard to categorize because they don’t quite fit the standard romantic comedy mold. Their characters are too idiosyncratic, their plot turns too unpredictable, their conclusions too open-ended. In other words, as he does in “How do You Know,” Brooks turns formula upside down and shakes out something original and true.

How do you know when you’ve seen a James L. Brooks movie? You’re left thinking about it and marveling at its wondrous foibles long after you’ve left the theater.

- Dennis King

“How Do You Know”

PG-13
1:56
3 stars
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, Kathryn Hahn
(sexual content and some strong language)