The Whole Nine Yards is a wonderfully crafted, wickedly smart, hilariously funny, intricately woven movie with a fantastic plot, great characters and just all around craziness that climaxes to a very pleasant satisfaction that doesn't make you immediately throw on the clothes, stretch your arms back and say "well, gotta work! I'll call you, promise." Apparently this model of filmmaking was a bad idea to the creators of The Whole Ten Yards, the sobbing, motionless, lazy sequel that confidently approaches its sexy predecessor, but instead of performing any sort of interest-arousing stimulation, explodes all over itself, falls on the floor and foams at the mouth while shaking in cine-phylactic shock.
Not only did The Whole Ten Yards suck, it successfully made me lose a little faith in the movie industry on par with when disease-ridden atrocities like Mr. Mom and Tooth Fairy infected screens everywhere and actually became iconic in their own disturbing fucking way. Why we felt that movies about hotshot poster-children for masculinity that dressed in aprons and complained about their panties riding up on them was all of a sudden for recipe for success is beyond me, but last I checked this kind of bullshit behavior was normally seen in Rated G movies because parents could only choose between that an Eddie Murphy flop, not in a PG-13 sequel to a Rated R hitman comedy. But hey? Having Bruce Willis in a country kitchen apron with a blonde wig, caring more about his flowers than ever getting laid again has to be worth at least half a laugh, right?
The Whole Ten Yards features the return of the exact same cast from the first movie with the exception of Intelligence, because it read the script and decided it wouldn’t be caught dead being a part of this crap. When pussy boy Oz’s (Matthew Perry) wife gets kidnapped by the Hungarian mob, he runs to Jimmy “The Tulip” Vagina (Bruce Willis, last name might not be accurate) to try to rescue her. Then a bunch of things happen that make no real sense and…yeah…somehow Bruce Willis gets half of a dollar bill back, which is all people should have been paid for this. I don’t quite understand what the fuck actually happened in this movie.
The leader of the Hungarian mob goes by Lazlo (Kevin Pollak), and older, bitter-beer-face version of Janni from the first movie, complete with inappropriately racist accent and moron bodyguard thugs that are clones of Cad from Underdog (because what thug isn’t nowadays). I mention this because the shallowness of this character, whose every nook and cranny of his character design was written for the kind of childish cheap laughs that usually accompany live-action Disney villains, is the model for every other character in this movie, even the ones well established in the first one. This movie abandoned the accomplishments of the original so much, I’m amazed The Whole Nine Yards didn’t sue it for defamation of character.
I watched The Whole Nine Yards right before I watched this and I realize that was a mistake, but probably also the best thing I could have possibly done, ‘cause if I didn’t, this might have gotten a higher score and if any of you have added a rule in your movie-watching commandments that says “if Joe at least gives it a 4, it’s worth the watch,” I would have felt bad. I’m baffled how a movie could have fallen so far from the tree unless it was kicked away so Bruce Willis could vacuum under it. The intrigue and fun was gone completely in every possible aspect of this film. The beautiful tapestry of woven wit and story was set on fire and its charred threads were then re-woven as a depressing farce to be sold on Etsy and bought by toked up Hollywood producers who stupidly bought the headline “ONE OF A KIND WORK OF ART!!!!! (!!!!)”
I will swear up and down all day how amazing The Whole Nine Yards is, but I will also swear up and down for a different reason after watching The Whole Ten. It’s as if that extra yard was the one that led right off a cliff, sending this film straight into the ground below only to pop up like an accordion and stagger into the street so it could get hit by a bus driven the Roadrunner with a sign on the back that says “Well that was a fucking stupid idea, wasn’t it!” If I recommend this movie to you, it’s because I don’t like you. The Whole Ten Yards goes the whole three yards with me. 3 dustbusters out of 10 and a big fuck-off, way to ruin a great cast of characters.
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