The Ten

If someone were to ask me what it takes to make a big budget movie be bad, I think I'd steer them sharply in the direction of the 2007 star studded movie, The Ten. Based on the Ten Commandments, this movie is so sensationally bad that watching it actually made me feel dirty.

Taking a nod and a wink from the 70's and 80's vignette style movies The Ten follows a story that surrounds each of the Ten Commandments, all stories are interlinked by the breakdown of a relationship between Jeff (Paul Rudd) and Gretchen (Famke Janssen). While trying to garner a Woody Allenesque feel, the movie actually comes off more like a terrible car crash, where the only civil resolution would be that all those involved were to perish.

I appreciate that my open statement might seem rather harsh; however try making an adult movie with lots of swearing, nudity, sex, and touchy subject matter; then try aiming it at an audience with the intellect of a five year old and you might just begin to understand where I am coming from. The terrible vignette stories include an uptight woman who has sex with Jesus, two men who feud over who has the best and most Cat Scan machines, a drug addict Rhino who tries to warn the community about an incoming bunch of AIDS infected wiener dogs who want to have sex with the locals so they die; and possibly the most bizarre a man who jumps out of a plane without a parachute only to become surgically attached with the earth, while he ponders how to get out of the ground without his internal organs falling out, his girlfriend has sex with the local news anchor before leaving him to have an illicit affair with a ventriloquist doll. And if you think things have got as bad as they can, there is a story about male rape, given a hysterical spin; of course I'm joking when I use the word Hysterical.

The humour is far from funny in this movie, it's in fact possibly the most puerile and worthless humour offering since the likes of Date and Epic movie. Worse still, the trailer makes the movie look half way worth watching, so imagine seeing the trailer, getting all psyched up for what appears to be a worthwhile comedy then having to endure something so terribly abysmal. Things go from bad to worse sadly with this movie, because as well as all the terrible humour (I use the word humour lightly) there is a terrible song and dance number where all the actors sing about themselves (not the characters they play).

"Sometimes I wonder what it might be like if I were the one ass raping you every night! I can't look at you without fantasising about shoving you up against the wall in the laundry room, and punching you in the mouth, and then raping you... Without your consent of course... That's what makes it rape!"

What I do find fascinating about the movie is exactly who stars in it, they have a fairly reasonable calibre of cast including Winona Ryder, Adam Brody (The OC), Ron Silver (Blue Steel), Gretchen Moll (3.10 To Yuma), Justin Theroux (Mulholland Drive), Liev Schreiber (Scream), Jessica Alba, Oliver Platt (Flatliners), and Janeane Garofalo (24, Mystery Men). And if that were not enough there are handfuls of actors from some of the most successful TV shows of recent years. Somehow in my mind the actors and the story just do not add up, this is not a big budget movie, although it is certainly Hollywood. How on earth did so many reasonably sized actors get involved in such a terrible movie? Were they doing someone a favour? Were they repaying a debt perhaps with the devil himself?

What I find most annoying about the movie is the intercut pieces that divide the stories, set on a giant soundstage it's like one of those artsy fartsy theatrical pieces where the actors interact with nothing, trying to make you use your imagination as to what you see. On this giant blacked out soundstage are the two tablets of stone (giant size) containing the Ten Commandments. Both Rudd and Janssen are so so actors either performing well or incredibly badly and this backdrop does neither any favours.

The Ten is due in UK cinemas later in the year, if you're going to take my advice on one thing this year, take my advice on this, because this really is abysmal.