The first one was good and ended with the good guys in comfortable places. No need to bring them back to resolve some hanging story thread or buddy-buddy tension. The Whole Nine Yards just made too much money for the people involved not to try a second time. I think–so hard to be sure–this one was so bad creatively and did so bad financially that there won’t be a third.
In The Whole Ten Yards our two couples (Bruce Willis and Amanda Peet, Matthew Perry and Natasha Henstridge) are fluffing along, more or less okay, until Hungarian mobster Laszlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollack as the brother of the crime boss he played last time) gets out of jail wanting revenge. Without showing us how he found them, Pollack kidnaps Henstridge which forces Perry to run to the others’ Mexican hideout. Not being quite as stupid as his brother he sticks a GPS unit in Perry’s Porsche and we get (a pretty crappy) firefight out front of the villa. Anyway, it goes on from there with what’s supposed to be a big twist.
George Gallo wrote the script (his past gems include Wise Guys–no, not Scorsese’s classic, this was the 1986 Devito/Piscopo comedy–and more recently David Arquette’s postal classic See Spot Run) and only came up with a bunch of shtick and bits which director Howard Deutsch can’t weave together. I think the missing piece is a character like Michael Clarke Duncan’s Frankie Figgs who bridges Willis and Perry to the Pollack’s gang; here is only Tasha Smith as Frankie’s sister and she’s got so little to do I’m guessing most of her lines were left on the editing room floor.
Deutsch has a history of making useless sequels and remakes such as Grumpier Old Men, The Odd Couple II, and Some Kind of Wonderful (okay, technically this wasn’t a remake but it sure seemed like they took the filling from all the previous John Hughes flicks and said “Ooh, let’s toast the bread this time!”) so I can only blame myself for not heeding every single review published.
I really do blame myself. All these cable channels, books, websites and I spent 100 minutes over two nights watching this. Must be punishment for something really bad.
not recommended–if you can’t find your remote pull the damn plug!
BillSaysThis 