Reviewed by FRANCESCA RUDKIN
(Herald rating: *)
The Whole Nine Yards released in 2000 wasn't funny or acclaimed, so it's a mystery as to why anyone thought it a good idea to make a sequel.
This mediocre black comedy picks up where the original effort left off.
Notorious hit-man Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski (Willis),
has retired to Mexico after staging his own death with the help of his paranoid ex-neighbour Oz (Perry). Oz now lives in California, has a successful dentistry practice and his security obsession has grown out of control.
Jimmy is now married to Jill (Peet), Oz's ex wife, and Oz is now married to Cynthia (Henstridge), Jimmy's ex wife. If wife-swapping in the suburbs sounds promising, it's not.
Hungarian mob boss Lazlo Gogolak, played by Kevin Pollak in an accent that you can't understand, is paroled and comes looking for Jimmy, who is responsible for murdering his son. Tracking down Oz, Gogolak kidnaps his wife Cynthia to lure Jimmy out of hiding.
And we're off to Mexico, Oz in a panic to talk Jimmy into helping him get his wife back and the mad Hungarian and his goons in incompetent pursuit. And then we're back in LA and then we're in a total muddle - them, us, but mostly the film.
It's clear throughout that this is a set-up, that Jimmy and Cynthia are back at their old tricks, but there are so many twists and turns in this film you get the feeling that even the director is lost.
Perry's slapstick performance is hard to watch, at first. To be fair, it becomes a little more tolerable throughout the film. The moments that work and get you giggling are Chandler moments. Perry is going to have a work a lot harder than this to have a successful post-Friends career.
Willis, on the other hand, spends a lot of time crying or pretend crying, and does an embarrassing job of the emotionally unstable "I just want to be a Dad" hit-man routine.
The script could have been witty, and the cast do everything they can to make the jokes work, but the plot gets lost in the mayhem - and so do we.
CAST: Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Kevin Pollak, Natasha Henstridge
DIRECTOR: Howard Deutch
RUNNING TIME: 98 minutes
RATING: M - violence and sexual references
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts and Berkeley cinemas
