THE WHOLE NINE YARDS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Warner Bros./Morgan Creek Productions Director: Jonathan Lynn Writer: Mitchell Kapner Cast: Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Rosanna Arquette, Michael Duncan, Natasha Henstridge, Amanda Peet, Kevin Pollak
When you hear that a movie with the title "The Whole Nine Yards" is about a dentist in suburban Montreal, you may figure that it's about floss, not football, and you would be partially correct. Jonathan Lynn's concept is mostly about the friendship between two unlikely fellows, a wimpy DDS with a practice in suburban Montreal and a hit man seeking to hide out from a gangster intent on eliminating him. Mitchell Kapner's screenplay has quite a few belly laughs as any decent sitcom would, but not only covers no new ground in its satire of uptight professionals and uncannily relaxed mobsters but is occasionally meanspirited, obvious to a fault, and performed by a troupe that seem to be putting on a show for their parents in a junior high auditorium. Filled with pratfalls, dopey facial expressions, and a mindless plot featuring comic betrayals and outrageously cartoonish characters, "The Whole Yards" displays a cast of actors who are either the only ones in town having a good time or just plain embarrassed to be going through these antics.
Bruce Willis takes a step back in a career that has seen him move toward deeper, more serious capacities: from a popular but stereotyped role in the "Die Hard" series to the more serious "12 Monkeys," "The Sixth Sense" and an unusually distinctive role as Dwayne Hoover in Alan Rudolph's absorbing, if commercial untenable, "Breakfast of Champions." This time around, Willis is Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski, a hit man who has had his sentence reduced by turning a dime on a brutal Chicago-based gang led by Janni Gogolak--who is just one of the many people wanting to see others dead. As his perfect foil, Matthew Perry spends a minimal amount of time in his office practicing dentistry as "Oz" Oseransky--a buttoned-down, regular guy who is so naive that he has been lured into marrying the sexy but awfully mean Sophie (Rosanna Arquette). Sophie is not simply a gold digger but a woman bored to tears by her insipid husband and is, herself, in the market for someone to do a contract killing for her.
In a story that's as worn as the enamel on a bruxist's teeth and witty as a root canal job, the hapless Oz, saddled with a vicious mother-in-law, a castrating wife and a minimum of patients, is shocked to discover that his new next door neighbor is actually a contract killer. Jimmy, who is ultra- relaxed and sophisticated, takes an immediate liking to the nervous and decidedly unhip neighbor, which goes a long way toward explaining why Oz seems the only one whose life is not in danger. Oz finds himself in the middle of a plot by Janni Gogolak (Kevin Pollak) to find the stool pigeon with his own help: he cannot be blamed for wondering who is really allied with whom, for things are not what they seem. Frankie Figs (Michael Clarke Duncan), an enormous gangster, appears to be allied with Gogolak but in reality is not. Oz's assistant in the office, Jill (Amanda Peet), treats her boss like an equal, urging him to go to Chicago, have a good time and "get laid." But she is not what she seems either, and in the picture's comic high point is shown to be a great admirer of the career of Jimmy Tudeski, eager to apprentice herself to him as a hit person. And Jimmy's wife Cynthia (Natasha Henstridge) comes across as a cool, cosmopolitan number but is actually petrified of her husband who, she believes, is intent on killing her.
For all we know, there could be youngsters of high-school age who will take this PG-13 feature seriously, particularly the casual attitude that the criminals have about serial killing. The whole murder incorporated enterprise comes across as nothing more serious than a chess game in which the goal is to checkmate your opponent painlessly before he can do you. This outlook is never clearer than what we see in the character of aspiring hit woman Jill, a gorgeous receptionist you'd least likely expect to have larceny in her heart, who appears turned on as never before in her life when in the presence of her hero--who has already killed seventeen people is on the way to duplicating that achievement.
While the picture is destined to take in solid box office because of the guaranteed draw of Bruce Willis and to some extent the following that Matthew Perry has gained from his role in the TV series "Friends," this film is nothing more than standard lowbrow fare featuring a little bathroom humor, lots of pratfalls, and an awfully silly army of hackneyed bumblers, plotters, wimps and Jezebels.
Rated PG-13. Running Time: 101 minutes. (C) 2000 Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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