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Matthew Perry's post-Friends career gets off to a shaky start with a boring, bland, and wholly unwarranted sequel to 2000's The Whole Nine Yards. Reuniting Perry's meek dentist with Bruce Willis' stern hit-man proves even less appealing this time around, with new director Howard Deutch resorting to tired clichés and predictable GoodFellas stereotypes to paper over the cracks. Like Analyze That, another attempt to stretch an idea beyond its natural shelf life, The Whole Ten Yards overestimates both our affection for and patience with its largely unpleasant protagonists.

When we last saw Nicholas 'Oz' Oseransky (Perry) and Jimmy 'The Tulip' Tudeski (Willis), they were both happily domiciled with Cynthia (Natasha Henstridge) and Jill (Amanda Peet) respectively. Well, maybe not that happily. Rehabilitated killer Jimmy is a house-proud wuss too busy cooking to satisfy his horny wife, while Oz is terrified that the wiseguys they double-crossed in the last instalment will wise up and come looking for him.

"98 MINUTES OF MIRTH-FREE ENTERTAINMENT"

And come knocking they do, with crimelord Lazlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollak, playing the father of his original character under a ton of facial prosthetics) abducting Cynthia so that Oz will lead him to Jimmy's secret hideaway. Since there wouldn't be much of a film if he didn't, it's not long before Willis and Perry are once again dodging bullets and trading insults as they try to avoid being harried by the mob.

Combining Perry's increasingly desperate pratfalls with a sourly homophobic sub-plot ("Why does my ass hurt?" asks Oz after waking up next to a naked Willis) hardly ups the gag quotient and makes us wonder what we saw in these morons in the first place. Suffice to say that after 98 minutes of mirth-free entertainment, the only comfort is that no one would be stupid enough to make The Whole Eleven Yards. Would they?