The Whole Nine Yards | 100 Movies Bucket List

 

I'd heard of this film, but I had no idea what it was about or who was in it, so I had no expectations when I saw it on the list.

But after looking it up and seeing it was a comedy that starred Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry, I was looking forward to watching it! That being said, I wasn't completely sold on the plot.

This took a while for me to get into.

For a start, I was expecting it to be funnier than it was. Not only because of the cast, but because the director's other works include 'Clue' and 'My Cousin Vinny', both of which I absolutely loved and found really funny.

The tone for this one however, particularly at the beginning, felt more like a drama. And not a drama that I was particularly invested in. There were a few funny moments throughout, but I wouldn't say the film is funny overall.

I thought the cast were well suited to their roles, but oddly I didn't like the roles themselves. They all felt a bit too straight and obvious, there was no surprises or subversions. 

And by that I mean that, they all play out as a form of caricatures. If you held up the basic description of each character without looking at their personality traits or other characteristics, this film is the first version you could imagine of how things would turn out. Everything is very basic and played out as you'd expect.

These are my least favourite characters played by most of the actors in the film. 

But with that, even if the characters felt original and 3-dimensional, the plot just didn't work for me. In the beginning I was waiting for things to happen, hoping something would spark my interest when we got further into the plot.

But the plot stayed pretty much the same the whole way through. It never really picked up, and it never got more interesting.

So as you can probably tell, this film wasn't my cup of tea. I'm not sure why it was included in this list over other comedies - particularly since the other comedies I mentioned directed by Jonathan Lynn probably would have been better placed.