Starring Matthew Perry and Bruce Willis. Rated PG.

I'm not sure that there is any more point in reviewing this film than in having seen it, but to make the exercise meaningful, I would like to make a personal disclosure. I have never been quoted by a studio in the promotional material of a movie. Why not? What's wrong with my quotes? Are they not laudatory? Do I not strive, painfully, to find good things to say about the most pathetic tripe? Come on, studio promotions departments! You'll not find anything nicer than these:

"The Whole Ten Yards did not make me physically ill."

"Matthew Perry's unfunny fidgeting demonstrates genuine effort."

"You'll be on the edge of your seat (if someone spills bubble tea on the backrest)."

"Intermittently...tolerable!"

The best part of this turgid hit-man comedy is a brief sequence in which Bruce Willis emerges naked from a bed also containing Matthew Perry. Not only is his butt admirably slim and muscled for a 50-year-old, the sight clarifies the relationship between retired assassin Jimmy the Tulip (Willis, far too good/famous for this kind of thing) and his neurotic dentist pal Oz (Perry, who isn't)--you know, from The Whole Nine Yards, which was about these guys doing...something. From its title on out, The Whole Ten Yards substitutes opacity and arbitrariness for clarity of story and purpose. You've got wives marrying each other's exes, guys pretending to hate each other in order to save each other, criminal fathers with troubled sons, and a triple-cross switcheroo revenge scam. I haven't been so confused since Marlena was revealed to be the Salem Desecrator on Days of Our Lives. But as a cautionary parable about closet cases, the story (replete with limp-penis references) suddenly makes sense enough to be almost funny.

This is directed by Howard Deutch, whom I remember as being one of John Hughes's relief directors for such Hughes factory seconds as The Great Outdoors. A quick check of IMDb.com reveals that Deutch (married to Lea Thompson, lucky fellow) went on to direct Grumpier Old Men and The Odd Couple 2. Deutch would thus seem to have become a specialist in mediocre follow-ups to comedies whose sequels seemed inevitable to no one. One anxiously awaits Marci XI, Can't Get Enough of Them Snow Dogs, and Grumpy Old Corpses, presumably with a few good ass shots.