Review By Justin Skinner

View This Trailer

Remember when Matthew Perry used to be funny? No, neither do I. And yet if my research is true (old taped episodes of Entertainment Tonight), people at one time actually thought him quite the card. I can't imagine anyone got this impression from his films, so I'm going to assume people found him funny on his television show Friends.

Having watched several in preparation for this article, let me lay this bombshell on you: all those people laughing at Perry's jokes? It turns out that laughter is pre-recorded. I was shocked too, but it certainly begs the question: if canned laughter was needed for Perry's jokes, what were they covering up? And was Entertainment Tonight in on the scam?

Normally I wouldn't disparage the good people at Entertainment Tonight. In fact, due to a rather brutal (and eventually humiliating) slapfight with Mary Hart and her thuggish entourage at last year's Oscars, I am in fact legally required to not disparage the good people at Entertainment Tonight. So, in the interest of good relations, let's take their claim that Matthew Perry was once funny on a TV show at face value. Even if they do hog like the whole red carpet so nobody else can even get in to talk to the celebrities, and then they make a big deal out of everything even though you barely nudged Mary Hart out of the way, and they blame you instead of her high heels and poor sense of balance, stupid ET dicks.

His comedic success on television regardless, Perry and the rest of the cast of Friends have managed to star in a four star movie. No one movie in particular, mind you—but if you added up the number of stars merited by the sum total of all of their movies, you'd have a number approximating four. That, of course, includes a generous three-star rating for Courtney Cox's Scream.

Matt Perry keeps the streak alive and then some with his latest star turn in The Whole Ten Yards. It's a bold choice by the producers, really, to even bother making a sequel to a movie as oppressively lame as The Whole Nine Yards—a film watched by a whole nine people upon its release, which would have been forgotten entirely if Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry hadn't both subsequently made worse and even less successful films, forcing them to return to their most recent quasi-hit.

Because I'm in a theorizing mood, here's my theory on how this movie got greenlit.

Producer: "I produced The Whole Nine Yards. Nice, huh?"
Reviewer: "I don't think you could have made a worse movie if you tried."
Producer: "Oh yeah? Why, I'll show you!"

Hence, Matthew Perry's spastic doofus and Bruce Willis' hit man team up for a second time, with a series of films whose names makes progressively less sense the more numbers are added to them. The trailer for The Whole Ten Yards re-introduces the premise that Bruce Willis is "the most notorious figure in the history of American crime." (Really? More notorious than Al Capone? John Dillinger? Bonnie and Clyde? Jeffrey Dahmer? David Berkowitz? Ted Bundy? Charles Manson? Stop me any time here…).

We then find out that he's, in fact, a hit man, a career for which notoriety would be a bad thing. First of all, if your hits know who to look out for, they'll be damn sure to avoid you. Second, if the cops know who to look out for, you're not gonna be doing much hit manning. In any case, it turns out that this hit man's been in hiding as…wait for it…wait for it…

A HOUSEHUSBAND!

You know, vacuuming, cleaning, cooking…all the while wearing an apron and a headscarf! Oh, man! Imagine the hilarity of a feared hit man being emasculated in that way! It's just so damned ridiculous, I could bash the screenwriter in the head! Repeatedly! With a brick!

Now, I'm not the type of guy who tells screenwriters how to do their job, but I personally think they've gone a bit overboard here. I've vacuumed the floor in my house before, and neither time did I feel the need to put on a dress and lipstick to do so. Making a feared killer do menial housework is one thing, but it's quite another to have him, presumably willingly, dress up like a girl to do so. Besides that, aren't we all a bit tired of the emasculated criminal bit by now? I wasn't a fan of that cliché when Analyze That stole it from the Sopranos. To be painfully and obviously derivative of something so painfully and obviously derivative speaks volumes about the state of creativity these days. Or, rather, it speaks one very short volume, titled Creativity No Longer Exists.

Cut to Matthew Perry, who's having troubles of his own. His character is "skittish", which in Matthew Perry Land translates to spazzing around and mugging like a retarded kid who's won a lifetime supply of ketchup and french fries. Perry tracks down Willis, who's now wearing…wait for it…wait for it…waiiit for it……BUNNY SLIPPERS! Together, they engage in a bunch of random foibles punctuated by that special and immortal brand of Willis/Perry chemistry composed of unnatural, forced dialogue and situations so contrived even Jack Tripper and Chrissy wouldn't accidentally misinterpret them while eavesdropping from the kitchen. Perry and Willis even manage to rip off the two-guys-cuddling-in-bed scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles in the trailer. It takes a certain kind of anti-skill to steal one of the funniest scenes in cinematic history—two guys waking up cuddling and sleep-kissing one another—and drive that premise starship directly into a black hole of comedy.

The movie as a whole takes just about every tired, clichéd premise in the book and throws them together in a mishmash of goofy stupidity. It's one thing to make a bad movie. It's quite another to make an even worse sequel that steals bits wholesale from other, better comedies, since it reminds you of all the films you could be renting right now instead of being trapped in a theater watching Bruce Willis in a dress sleeping with Matthew Perry.

RATING: