The Whole Ten Yards: Movie, DVD Review

Directed by Howard Deutch, written by Mitchell Kapner and George Gallo, 99 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2004)

It's still early in the movie season and surely other stinkers will punch it from its low perch. Still, so far this year, worst movie honors go to Howard Deutch's "The Whole Ten Yards," which doesn't go a foot before it falls into a shallow grave of its own making.

The film is a lazy, dumb, irrelevant sequel to 2000's "The Whole Nine Yards," which was good for what it was. It took a tired genre - the hitman comedy - and manufactured from it a funny farce. The movie took risks, the dialogue was reasonably clever and the actors seemed to be having fun, which was key.

Not so here.

As directed by Deutch from a screenplay by Mitchell Kapner and George Gallo, "The Whole Ten Yards" gathers together most of its predecessor's cast and puts out a contract on their careers.

The story is strictly business as usual, with former hitman Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski (Bruce Willis) now living in Mexico with his chickens, his denial, his bunny slippers, his mullet and Jill (Amanda Peet), who has become an emotionally unbalanced hitwoman unable to score a direct hit.

One of the gags is that Jimmy has become a house husband, the Martha Stewart of the Mafia set. Another gag is that in spite of shooting so much weaponry in his youth, he can't seem to get Jill pregnant because he himself is shooting blanks. Isn't that hilarious? That's the film at its best, folks.

Also unfunny is Matthew Perry's overbearing pratfalls as Oz, the Montreal dentist who gets mixed up again with Jimmy and Jill after a Hungarian gangster named Lazlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollack) kidnaps Oz's wife, Cynthia (Natasha Henstridge), so he can get to Jimmy through Oz.

That sounds like a setup for a relatively straightforward plot, but the execution is so frenzied and muddled - and so sloppily edited - that Perry's character speaks volumes when he starts exclaiming about how confused he is by how everything turns out. Trust me on this - we feel his pain.

Movies like "The Whole Ten Yards" are product for the sake of product - Hollywood at its worst. They're so excruciatingly unstimulating and banal, so cynical in their unflattering view of what audiences will accept as entertainment that you sit there not only amazed that people are getting paid millions to put this junk onto the screen, but also regretting that you got suckered by their punch.

Grade: F