“The Whole Ten Yards”
Jimmy “The Tulip” Tudeski - Bruce Willis
Dr. Nicholas “Oz” Oseransky - Matthew Perry
Jill Tudeski - Amanda Peet
Lazlo Gogolak - Kevin Pollak
Cynthia Tudeski Oseransky - Natasha Henstridge
Directed by Howard Deutch

In the beginning of The Whole Ten Yards, the sequel to the 2000 gangster-farce The Whole Nine Yards, retired hitman Jimmy “The Tulip” Tudeski (Played by Bruce Willis) finds himself in the throes of a mid-life crisis, obsessing about cleanliness, his cooking and his chickens at his beachside bungalow in Mexico, miles away from the perils of his former life. But not for long.

With the aid of faked dental records from his previous neighbor and dentist Nicholas “Oz” Oseransky, (Matthew Perry of TV’s Friends’ fame), Jimmy had succeeded, at the outset of the movie, in faking his own death to escape the gangsters who threatened him in the first film. In the meantime, he has satisfied himself, somewhat anyhow, with a new domesticated existence along with his wife, Jill, (Amanda Peet who returns in a role that first made her a star), an assassin who, although under the wing of her experienced husband, has yet to pull off a clean hit.

Then, without warning, their uninvited and certainly unwanted past shows up on the Tudeskis’ doorstep when the hapless Oz, breathless and desperate, begs them to help rescue his wife, Cynthia (Natasha Henstridge) – who is also Tudeski’s ex-wife from the previous film -- from the grip of Hungarian mobsters with a score to settle.

Jimmy, of course, is less than interested: he has his loving chickens to tend to. Before he can scare Oz off his property in a hail of machine-gun fire, however, a group of even less-invited, more unexpected visitors show up, guns ablaze. Freshly paroled mob boss Lazlo Gogolak (a barely recognizable, scratchy-voiced Kevin Pollak) and his entourage of Hungarian thugs have followed the dentist from L.A. and descended on Jimmy’s secluded coastal home. During all his years in prison, Gogolak has been contemplating getting even with Jimmy for knocking off his favorite son -- and how he’s going to take revenge on Oz for helping him get away with it
From here, the film takes a long series of twists and turns in which the Tudeskis’ and Oz return to California and jump through a series of comic hoops in order to win Cynthia’s freedom. In an ultimately failed bid to exchange one of Gogolak’s goons for Cyntha, the naïve, hyper Oz and the neurotic, hardened Jimmy go through a series of scenes that are engaging and often quite funny.

Although panned by most critics, I found this film surprisingly funny and consistent, clipping along at a brisk pace. And while the plot forces the viewer to take more than a few leaps of faith, it comes together in a pleasing, if unassuming way. It is important to note, however, that my expectations were very low when I sat down to watch this film, having spent more time and money than I care to recall watching the original The Whole Nine Yards which was an unmitigated disaster.

Here director Howard Deutch (who directed Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful) scores by playing the main characters off each other – notably Willis and Perry, who clearly seem to enjoy working with each other - showing off their strengths instead of their weaknesses. Although Willis comes across as smug at times, and Perry too weak and overactive, this is not unlike many of the characters they normally play and the strong humorous chemistry between the two is undeniable, especially since neither is taking himself too seriously.

Many of the film’s jokes do indeed fall flat, notably its homoerotic humor -- particularly a scene in which a drunken Perry wakes up with more than a bad hangover after a night of heavy drinking with Willis. There is plenty of over-the-top slapstick humor, too, in which Perry can be seen tripping over things and crashing into walls and floors, which can get kind of dull.

Overall, though, Ten Yards is a diverting, unpretentious film worth watching if only for the consistency of its humor, if not the strength of its plot.