THE TEN (2007)
Starring Paul Rudd, Jessica Alba, Michael Ian Black, Adam Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Rob Corddry, Arlen Escarpeta, Janeane Garafolo, Ben Garant, Famke Janssen, Kerry Kenney-Silver, Joe Lo Truglio, Ken Marino, A.D. Miles, Gretchen Mol, Oliver Platt, Winona Ryder, Liev Schreiber, Ron Silver, Justin Theroux and Mather Zickel.
Screenplay by Ken Marino and David Wain.
Directed by David Wain.
Distributed by City Lights Pictures. 95 minutes. Rated R.
The ten referred to in the title are the ten commandments.
It's been a long time since the days when Charlton Heston could pull off wearing sandals and getting the movie-going public to care about these tablets of life rules. Cecil B. DeMille is long dead. How does one make the ten commandments viable to an attention-span-limited, cynical 21st century public?
The makers of The Ten have decided to do it by mining them for broad sketch comedy.
Some parts of it are very successful. Other parts... not so much so.
Paul Rudd plays a director who is making a film telling ten stories which illustrate each of the commandments (though very loosely, granted...).
Like all sketch comedies, some of this is hysterical. Some of it is stupid.
For example, Winona Ryder's torrid love affair with a ventriloquist's dummy is priceless. The story of a guy who becomes a media celebrity after skydiving without a parachute also has some clever things to say about today's celeb culture. Also funny is a love story between two male prison inmates.
Some of the less likable skits include a doctor who leaves scissors in a patient as a goof, an animated skit about a lying, drug-dealing rhino and a suburban househusband who skips church to sit around naked with his friends and listen to Roberta Flack.
In the meantime, between stories, Rudd's character keeps getting interrupted by his wife (Famke Jannsen) and his hot young girlfriend (Jessica Alba) or bitching about his life to his buddies and the audience.
It all ends up with a weird extended jam-session where all the characters tell their story in song.
After watching The Ten, I honestly don't feel like I know anything more about the ten commandments than I did going in. However, I did get some good laughs mixed in along the way.
Alex Diamond
Copyright ©2008 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: January 12, 2008.
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