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a) from tailors who allegedly used nine yards of material to make a classy suit. b) from construction workers because concrete delivery trucks had nine cubic yards of capacity or c) from WWII pilots because a B-52 bomber could drop a total of nine square yards of bombs per run.
The Whole Nine Yards is also a Bruce Willis movie which means a) he smirks a lot. b) he sometimes wears a trailer-trash undershirt c) he often mistakes his growl-like quiet voice for acting.
In other words, if Willis gives you the willies, just say no. For those with low-level comedy tastes, you should get some laughs from this passable Jonathan Lynn-directed production, although it's not up to his gem, My Cousin Vinny.
Willis plays Jimmy The Tulip, a Chicago hitman hiding out from a Chicago mob in a Montreal suburban house.
The Tulip just happens to find himself next door to a henpecked dentist (Matthew Perry). And as ridiculous coincidence would have it, the dentist's wife (Rosanna Arquette) is in the market for a hitman.
Through some subsequent Mitchell Kapner-scripted cornball developments, Perry's dentist becomes a possible target.
He also acts as a go-between or a dupe in an elaborate scheme to either finger The Tulip for death or scam The Tulip's enemy out of some major money.
Resolving that concept over-load is not what The Whole Nine Yards has going for it.
Perry, as the bumbling dentist, does have moments in the tripping and falling category that put him in the not-quite Peter Sellers department, but still funnier than his TV Friends doofus.
Willis, for all his predictable tricks, maintains a sense of nasty decorum. Michael Clarke Duncan, recently Oscar nominated for his Green Mile gentle giant, is likable as The Tulip's sidekick.
Amanda Peet, the dentist's loopy assistant, seems to appreciate the farcical premise for what it is -- a reason to get goofy. As a moll doll, Natasha Henstridge is tall.
Arquette's shrew? She speaks a peculiar and mostly annoying French-accented English, which makes her sound as if she lives a few miles out of Paris, not Montreal. Kevin Pollack's Hungarian gangster is in need of a witty line or two, or a lot less screen time.
As it is, if you go the whole nine yards with The Whole Nine Yards, you'll find that a) sometimes you'll laugh with the movie b) sometimes you'll laugh at the movie c) sometimes you'll laugh because there's nothing else to do.
(This film is rated AA)