Crimes
- Somehow imagining it inhabited a universe in which 2000's The Whole Nine Yards left audiences panting for more
- Slathering unconvincing pancake makeup on Kevin Pollak so he can mug to the heavens as an antiquated relative of his character from the first film
- Replacing the original movie's clockwork mechanics with a lurching, sputtering plot that builds to a shrug-inducing anticlimax
- Encouraging Matthew Perry to flail about wildly while Bruce Willis attempts to out-ham Pollak with a grating crazy-guy routine
- Defender
Writer George Gallo and director Howard Deutch - Tone Of Commentary
Amiable, self-congratulatory, undeservedly proud. Deutch and Gallo spend much of the track complimenting themselves on adeptly mixing laughter, suspense, and plausibility, which would come across as arrogant even if they weren't talking about a film distinguished mainly by an absence of laughter, suspense, and plausibility. - What Went Wrong
The film was hastily assembled. Re-shoots were necessary. Gallo and Deutch nitpick about the believability of specific plot points. - Comments On The Cast
Perry's manic, flop-sweat-drenched shtick earns him comparisons to Jack Lemmon. He's also dubbed a genius of physical comedy. Pollak's grotesque scenery-chewing is deemed hilarious and menacing. The filmmakers devote a good deal of time to inarticulate explanations of Amanda Peet's greatness. Though Gallo and Deutch compliment the entire cast for its fantastic chemistry, their praise for Bruce Willis remains surprisingly muted. His resemblance to Ben Gazzara, however, is duly noted. - Inevitable Dash Of Pretension
The film is regularly compared to Andrew Bergman's script for The In-Laws, but an insufferable late-film monologue is singled out for its echoes of Billy Wilder. Elsewhere, Gallo and Deutch insist that The Whole Ten Yards is a lot like John Cassavetes' Husbands. - Commentary In A Nutshell
Shortly after professing what an honor it was to work with Deutch (who previously directed such noteworthy sequels as The Odd Couple II and Grumpier Old Men), Gallo reveals just how carefully he tackled that honor. "I've never been involved in a movie quite like this before, where basically we were writing it and making it up on the fly," he says. "Every day, we'd have a location we knew we were going to shoot in, and then basically we wrote it as we went."
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