3 out of 5

Director: Jonathan Lynn

Funny funny ha ha ha, The Whole Nine Yards is a fairly successfully funny dark R-rated comedy that begins with a great premise and lots of energy before devolving into predictable romantic comedy beats for its latter half. So Matthew Perry is a dentist living in Canada with a wife who hates him (Arquette) and cant wait for him to die in order to get her hands on some sweet life insurance. When mobster – Bruce Willis – who is wanted by his mobster pals for ratting them out moves in next door, a scheme is hatched by wifey for Perry to try to get a finders fee for reporting Willis location to the mob. Or is that whats going on? We get double crosses aplenty, and some truly surprising twists and turn early on that establish, for the most part, which characters we like and which ones we dont. To this extent we get great visual comedy and some quirky dialogue from all of the principles, along with some good R nudity (a rarity in the context its used, and very refreshing in that sense) and – while not violent violence – enough to believe in Willis as an assassin and not just a character in a comedy. So its chuckles, its zippy, the story is handled well… until we get a developing romance angle with Natasha Henstridge (Willis wife in the movie), which drops things back into fluff territory with easy emotions and quick happy endings. But thankfully things wrap up pretty quick and theres enough smiles to keep you warm through 99 minutes.