There just wasn't enough left to stretch another yard out of the clever hit-man farce 'The Whole Nine Yards'

Friday, April 9, 2004

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

The 2000 hit-man comedy, "The Whole Nine Yards," was no masterpiece but it was a clever, enjoyably slapsticky farce that provided a solid vehicle for Bruce Willis as a contract killer, Matthew Perry as his long-suffering neighbor and Amanda Peet as a homicidally ambitious dental assistant.

MOVIE REVIEW

THE WHOLE TEN YARDS

DIRECTOR: Howard Deutch

CAST: Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet

RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for crude humor and comic violence

WHERE: Bella Bottega 11, Cinema 17, Crossroads 8, East Valley 13, Everett 9, Factoria, Galleria 11, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Longston Place 14, Marysville Cinema 14, Metro, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, Parkway Plaza 12, Valley Drive-in, Woodinville 12

GRADE: D

For the sequel, "The Whole Ten Yards," Warner Bros. has reassembled the same cast with a different director (Howard Deutch subbing for Jonathan Lynn) and come up with an excruciating rehash that has virtually none of the wit and charm of the original.

The first thing the movie does wrong is jump right into its complex set of characters and relationships with no subtle recap of what we saw four years ago. So if you haven't watched the DVD lately, you're in for a 99-minute struggle of trying to figure out what's going on.

It's also clear that the original was complete unto itself and the writers have had to strain themselves to come up with a gawdawful premise that has the stars threatened by the Hungarian gangster father (Kevin Pollak) of some obscure character killed in part one.

The single bright spot of the proceedings is Peet, whose aspiring hit-woman set the tone of the original and sparked its best scenes. Once again, she nails the character but everything around her is so dismal that she's operating in a vacuum.

Both Willis and Perry are just excruciatingly unfunny. Bruce mugs his way through the silliness on automatic pilot, and Perry wildly overacts, endlessly stumbling into the sets and launching into long, tedious, paranoid monologues that make you want to stand up and scream "cut!"

Director Deutch, a veteran of '80s brat-pack comedies ("Pretty in Pink"), keeps everything moving at a frantic pace, but it's much ado about nothing, and he can't disguise the fact that the only inspiration for this particular reunion is greed.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com