Last week was the fun of "Walking Tall".
This week is the fun of "The Whole Ten Yards". I have now seen the preview for this movie about 8 times - You can literally feel the badness wafting off of it like a scene. It exudes badness.
Leave it to Roger Ebert to sum it up:
The movie has the hollow, aimless aura of a beach resort in winter.
And here is this shocking indictment, where Ebert singles out one of the performances:
Lazlo Gogolak is played by Kevin Pollak (again) in one of the most singularly bad performances I have ever seen in a movie. It doesn't fail by omission, it fails by calling attention to its awfulness. His accent, his voice, his clothes, his clownish makeup, all conspire to create a character who brings the movie to a halt every time he appears on the screen. We stare in amazement, and I repeat: What did they think they were doing?
(I read that, and it kind of makes me want to see it.)
Posted by sheilaConsidering The Whole Nine Yards was such crap, I'm not surprised to hear the follow-up was bad as well.
Posted by: Emily at April 9, 2004 12:29 PMExactly! Ebert ends by saying something like:
"I can't imagine that there will be a Whole Eleven Yards"
Posted by: red at April 9, 2004 12:30 PMHey, I thought the first one was funny. And Ebert liked it too, didn't he?
Posted by: Stephen Silver at April 9, 2004 12:47 PMEbert did like the first one:
The movie is an unnecessary sequel to "The Whole Nine Yards" (2000), a movie in which many of the same actors sent completely different messages from the screen. "A subtle but unmistakable aura of jolliness sneaks from the screen," I wrote in my review of the earlier movie. "We suspect that the actors are barely suppressing giggles. This is the kind of standard material everyone could do in lockstep, but you sense inner smiles, and you suspect the actors are enjoying themselves."
He gave the new movie one star only.
I enjoyed The Whole Nine Yards the first time I saw it, and haven't been able to stomach it since.
From the Post, which gave it 1/2 star:
Hollywood hackwork even by the standards of "Grumpier Old Men" director Howard Deutch, "Ten Yards" is a labor of greed that reeks of contempt for the audience.Posted by: Bill McCabe at April 9, 2004 4:09 PMBereft of inspiration, the agonizingly witless screenplay - blamed by the credits on George Gallo - resorts to pathetic cheap jokes about flatulence and impotence, lame slapstick and that juvenile gag about the horror of two men waking up naked in the same bed.
My memory of the original is moderately positive. I liked it, but I haven't really had the urge to see it again. As far as this one goes, based on reviews and the TV ads I've seen, it does indeed sound like dreck.
Posted by: MikeR at April 9, 2004 5:46 PMI hear echoes of this from Ghost World...
REBECCA (Scarlett Johansson): This is kind of so bad it's good.
ENID (Thora Birch): No, this has gone past so bad it's good and back to just bad.
Posted by: Dave J at April 10, 2004 10:27 AMSTRONG recommendation: Watch the final minutes of Comedy Central's behind-the-scenes look at The Whole Ten Yards, which airs Monday 10:30-11:00 AM EDT and again early Tuesday morning. Over the closing credits, Kevin Pollak does a simply-freaking-hilarious impression of Christopher Walken. I'd bet real money that there are more laughs in these twenty seconds or so than in the entire movie.
Posted by: Michael at April 10, 2004 10:45 PM