BEFORE: It's the week for TV season finales, which means I have to stay off of all social media until I can get some more TV shows watched. I've got sort of a hierarchy when it comes to reality TV - I've simply got to watch the "Survivor" finale live (OK, half an hour late) because I can't risk seeing the results in the news the following day. But that knocked out my whole Sunday night. For "American Idol", I've been about a week behind ever since I got back from vacation - fortunately most of the results haven't made the news this year, so all I have to do is avoid "The Tonight Show" on Fridays (or Mondays, or whenever they have the loser on - you know what, let's just skip Leno for the duration...).
For "The Celebrity Apprentice", I've also been running about a week behind, watching Sunday's show the following Saturday, when I have time to clear the DVR. But this means I hadn't seen the show where the Final Four got cut down to the Final Two, and I saw the finalists on a poster promoting their ice cream flavors while walking past a Duane Reade today. Oh, well, I knew the risks - this just means I can probably zip through last Sunday's episode even faster to get to the finale/results. And for "The Amazing Race", well, I just dumped all the episodes to VHS and I'll try to get to them in the next couple of weeks. I stayed off Twitter for a few days right after, and with this show it's good that the news doesn't really report the winners any more, after so many seasons it barely registers on the hip-meter.
Tonight I'm also wrapping up this week's Bruce Willis-themed programming. I don't have a copy of this one handy - no cable channel seems to want to run it - but I'd rather finish the franchise than have to circle back to this later, so I'm willing to spend a couple bucks and watch this on iTunes. I give, and give and give for you people, and what thanks do I get?
THE PLOT: Jimmy the Tulip's quiet new life is shaken up by his old pal Oz, whose wife has been kidnapped by a Hungarian mob.
AFTER: So since I don't like having things spoiled, I try to maintain a spoiler-free zone here at the Movie Year. Most of the time I'm able to talk about a film by just stating the premise, and without giving away all the plot points and twists, or I mainly talk about my general thoughts on the film, or find a way to connect it to my current or past experiences. This is why I don't think of myself as a movie reviewer - I don't envy those people who have to talk about a film without talking about things that happen in it. That seems like a tricky line to walk.
Just wondering, has anyone ever seen the words "SPOILER ALERT" and stopped reading? I know I haven't - printing it just seems to be something of a formality, like covering your mouth when you cough, even though you're still going to touch everything with that hand and talk on the phone and spread your germs anyway. I always keep reading, maybe I'm not a strong enough person - and only occasionally have I regretted doing so.
I've definitely got an advantage when I watch films from the 80's or 90's - or even tonight's film, released in 2004. If you haven't gotten around to watching this film yet, maybe you're not destined to do so - or maybe it's not your kind of film. I think the downfall of "The Whole Ten Yards" is that it's trying to be so many different things - a romance, a comedy, a black comedy (yes, they're different), an action shoot-em-up, and a heist film (though in a roundabout way). And then on top of all that, it throws in a bunch of slapstick for good measure - and slapstick, of course, is the lowest rung on the comedy ladder. Can someone tell me how many times Matthew Perry manages to slam his body into a door, which he is also trying to walk through? He seems quite uncoordinated.
There's also a feeble attempt to turn the love triangle from the last film (hitman/hitman's ex-wife/dentist) into a quadrangle by involving the hitman's girlfriend - but this slams together two characters in an unbelievably forced fashion - so why do it, then?
There's almost nothing here about the morality of contract killing, except to point out the same dichotomy as before, that the hitman doesn't consider himself to be a bad person. Any other contrasts here are derived from showing him cooking, cleaning house, and tending to his domestic chickens.
Beyond that, the movie has "the plan", though it never gets around to cluing the audience in on the big plan until the film is about 95% over. This, of course, is after the "perfect" plan from the first film manages to unravel in the first 5 minutes of this one. So, how perfect was it?
There's also an embarrassingly large number of continuity mistakes - too many to list here, but you can read about all of them on the IMDB. It's another sign that the filmmakers just weren't trying very hard here - even the continuity people were just phoning it in.
Also starring Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Natasha Henstridge, Kevin Pollak (all carrying over from "The Whole Nine Yards"),
RATING: 3 out of 10 shot glasses
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