The Whole Nine Yards (** out of ****) Starring Matthew Perry, Bruce Willis, Michael Clarke Duncan Directed By Jonathan Lynn Warner Bros. / Morgan Creek, Rated PG-13, 2000 Running Time: 1 Hour 39 Minutes
By Sean Molloy (from www.mediajunkies.com)
LIGHT SPOILERS
There's a fledgling subgenre out there in movie-land; for arguments' sake, let's call it the "mainstream postmodern ironic suburban hitman comedy." On its good days it brings you your Get Shorty's and your Grosse Pointe Blank's; and on it's off days, well, you end up with Mickey Blue Eyes. The Whole Nine Yards lies somewhere in the middle ground - it's a movie that has all the right elements waiting on the sidelines, but suffers from having a central character that simply can't bring everything together.
Matthew Perry plays Nick Oseransky (if he had friends they'd call him "Oz"), the charming loser dentist. He lives in Montreal with his wife Sophie (Rosanna Arquette, sporting an obnoxious accent, and tapping into the old comedic standby that Americans just don't like those snotty French people) and her mother; it's clear that these women despise him and wish death upon him, and that poor Oz is driven to the brink of insanity by them, but, dammit, they're all he's got. And that sentence about as detailed as what we're told in the movie - the one- minute, one-dimensional setup of these folks' relationship is really all we get.
When the notorious Chicago hitman Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski moves in next door, Nick's world is, of course, set on its ear. Nick recognizes Jimmy instantly, and, since Nick also happens to hail from the Windy City himself, he knows Jimmy The Tulip's entire kill record and courtroom history. He also knows that the Gogolack crime family back in Chicago has Jimmy on their hit list. His wife Sophie, money-hungry leech that she is, decides that Nick should take a plane to Chicago and let the Gogolacks know about Jimmy's whereabouts, hoping there's some sort of finder's fee. Nick, spineless wimp that he is, agrees to go along with her plan, and, of course, he gets caught in the middle up in a mini-mobster war of sorts. It's a silly and contrived sitcom setup, granted, but the plot in this kind of film is secondary; it really only needs to serve as a showcase for its quirky and off-center characters.
But alas, The Whole Nine Yards doesn't have a whole lot to offer in the character department - except for a few of the more minor roles, there's just not a whole lot of quirky goin' around. Let's take a look at the lineup of the usual suspects, in order from least to most appealing...
# 1 - "The Hitman's Wife" aka Cynthia aka Natasha Henstridge - She plays Jimmy The Tulip's unhappy and uninteresting wife, and seems genuinely surprised that a man who's killed 17 people turned out to be a bad husband. What doesn't seem genuine, however, is the romance that quickly flares up between herself and Nick the Dentist. She's also the lucky contestant that gets to utter the inevitable line that includes and poorly explains the movie's title.
# 2 - "The Dentist" aka Nick "Oz" Oseransky aka Matthew Perry - The movie's fatal structural weakness. A central character needs to be able to hold a film together, and Nick just doesn't have what it takes. It's not Perry's fault that Oz is an uninteresting and only occasionally funny guy... He trips over couches, runs into lamps, and stutters with the best of them, but the script makes the mistake of filtering too much through his boring and unoriginal eyes.
# 3 -" The Hitman With a Heart of Gold" aka Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski aka Bruce Willis - Here Willis plays the fundamentally good-hearted contract killer with the skewed view of the world that makes Nick the Dentist roll his eyes and do spit takes. The Whole Nine Yards features Bruce Willis in "Acting Mode 2." These are the movies he does to make up for the pay cuts he takes to be in good films like 12 Monkeys and Pulp Fiction, and if that's what he has to do, then that's all right by me. He delivers a perfectly acceptable performance that he could have easily just phoned in, but at least it looks like he was having fun.
# 4 - "The Ving Rhames" aka Frankie Figs aka Michael Clarke Duncan - If Duncan, who was the heart and soul of The Green Mile, is trying to differentiate himself from Ving Rhames, then this is the wrong way to go about it. Here he plays another hitman with hidden and shifting motives. He shows the same kind charisma he did as The Green Mile's John Coffey and gets some genuine smiles, but his ultimate fate seems remarkably unfitting.
# 5 - "The Boss" aka Yanni Gogolack aka Kevin Pollak - The boss of the Hungarian Gogolack crime family who wants to see Jimmy dead. Most of his laughs come from his indescribably goofy accent - a humorous and well-practiced blend of Michael Corleone and Bela Lugosi - and the bizarre non-words that come out of his mouth as a result.
# 6 - "The Apprentice" aka Jill aka Amanda Peet - This overly enthusiastic protege of Jimmy the Tulip is the movie's clear standout. She projects the same brand of believable nonchalance toward her chosen profession as John Cusack's character in Grosse Pointe Blank. I couldn't help but smile whenever she was on the screen. And unfortunately for The Whole Nine Yards, I couldn't help but wish I was watching Grosse Pointe Blank instead.
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