Starring - Bruce Willis; Matthew Perry; Rosanna Arquette; Michael Clarke Duncan & Natasha Henstridge Director - Jonathan Lynn MPAA - Rated R for some sexuality/nudity and violence. The whole Nine Yards is one of those movies that may very well have had a good idea at its core in some past incarnation. But after the dumb slapstick jokes and bad acting were added, really didn't measure up. Matthew Perry plays a dentist living in Canada with his obnoxious wife (Rosanna Arquette). He leads a pretty miserable existence, and it gets worse when a former mob hit man, Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski (Bruce Willis) moves in next door. After that things go right downhill. Perry's character gets embroiled in a plot where it seems that everybody is out to get everybody else. The players involved range from Jimmy's ex-wife (Natasha Henstridge), to a mod boss with a grudge against Jimmy (Kevin Pollak), a fellow hit man (Michael Clarke Duncan), and Perry's dental assistant (Amanda Peet). The story is fairly clever. Sadly, the dark comedy is interspersed with really bad slapstick moments which not only fall flat, but are totally misplaced in this sort of film. Then we have the acting. Willis isn't bad, his sly charm does seem to fit in well with the character that he is playing, but he just doesn't have much to work with. At times, Perry is almost embarrassing to watch he is so unfunny. But for most of the movie, his performance is passable. Michael Clarke Duncan is reunited with his Armageddon co-star, Willis. It is obvious that this film was made before Clarke realized his full acting potential in The Green Mile, since his hit man character is nothing more than a caricature of your typical big affable black guy. Amanda Peet is easily the high point of this movie (and not just because she has an extended topless scene -- although that helped.) When Peet is good, she is very good. Unfortunately her character goes from relatively normal to completely ditzy seemingly at random. Natasha Henstridge is good, but her character was fairly limited. She basically just stands around looking good. Then we have the accent people. Kevin Pollak's annoyed mob boss has this god-awful Jersey accent. I wasn't quite sure at first if Pollak was playing the accent for laughs or if he was a far worse actor than I thought he was. I'll assume that it was for laughs. Then we have Rosanna Arquette as Perry's French wife. If her French accent was for laughs, I missed it. It was easily the worst accent, or performance for that matter, in the film. How this woman still gets parts now that she can't strip in every movie is completely beyond me. Willis' character was basically a hit man version of his Moonlighting character. My advice is to rent Die Hard for a good Willis movie. Perry should really stick to TV. Amanda Peet on the other hand, will easily be able to use her TV show, Jack & Jill, and this fairly bad movie as a springboard to bigger and better things. The best part about The Whole Nine Yards was that Amanda Peet got topless. The worst part, other than Rosanna Arquette, was that Natasha Henstridge didn't. 4/10 - Which might be a bit generous; although, Ms. Peet's breasts rate a 10/10 in my books.

¶ 2/20/2000 04:32:00 PM

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