The Whole Ten Yards Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)April 8th, 2004
THE WHOLE TEN YARDS
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: F
Warner Bros./ Cheyenne Enterprises
Directed by: Howard Deutch
Written by: George Gallo, based on characters created by Mitchell Kapner
Cast: Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Kevin Pollak, Natasha Henstridge
Screened at: Loews E-Walk, NYC, 4/6/04
We don't expect Masterpiece Theater when we go to most commercially-made comedies. We expect some silliness. After all weren't the greats of the genre Buster Keaton, the Marx brothers, Charlie Chaplin, all silly with their pratfalls and their zany actions? By contrast, "The Whole Ten Yards" is not only silly but actually painful to sit through. Bruce Willis is a fine actor who can easily take on roles in serious dramas as well as comedies and Amanda Peet is not simply good to look at but a talented performer. But given the loose, even absent direction and the incompetent script by two new guys in the field, Howard Deutch and George Gallo "The Whole Ten Yards" becomes a failure at every level.
The pic is a sequel to Jonathan Lynn's year 2000 film "The Whole Nine Yards," also starring Bruce Willis as a hit man and Matthew Perry as his next-door neighbor, a dentist in suburban Montreal. In that worthy effort, Perry performs as a character who can get something he wants by turning a dime on his neighbor to members of the latter's former Chicago gang. A black comedy with several competent twists, "Nine" may have been a yard smaller than Deutch's effort but a whole lot more laughs. By contrast, "The Whole Ten Yards" has (count 'em) not a single chuckle unless you're a mighty unsophisticated member of the audience who gets his jollies from each pratfall and a taste for vulgarities ranging from the flatulence of an old woman, the running over of a pet chicken, and worst of all the grating repetition of a shrill voice coming from a jackass of a gangster.
Director Deutch has changed the venue from Montreal to L.A. and Mexico, opening on retired hit man Jimmy Tudeski (Bruce Willis), who seeks laughs from the audience by posing with a kerchief on his head, and apron on his torso, and some talk about the latest dish he's baking for himself and his wife Jill (Amanda Peet). Jill, contemptuous of her husband's retirement and of his inability to impregnate her due to erectile dysfunction, wants to be the heavy of the duo, but she fails as a killer because she is unable to hit the side of a barn.
Meanwhile the newly released honcho of the Hungarian mafia, Lazlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollak), seeks revenge on Jimmy for the latter's alleged killing of Lazlo's sun, Yanni. To get the information he needs, he kidnaps Cynthia (Natasha Henstridge), Jimmy's former wife, now married to dentist Oz Oseransky (Matthew Perry). The plan is to have Oz find Jimmy in Mexico, thereby leading Lazlo to his prey.
The plot, such as it is, involves a couple of twists, some double crosses, several takes of Willis crying, drinking, cooking, the opposite of what you'd expect a hit man to do--all devices in the service of getting cheap guffaws that could indeed come from those too embarrassed to hide under their seats.
Rated PG-13. 99 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
[email protected]
More on 'The Whole Ten Yards'...
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
