Here's a Zen Hollywood question. Who -- while utterly convinced of his own hilariousness -- is more egregiously unfunny, Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone?

The question is largely moot, since Stallone has been prevented from making alleged comedies for some time.

Unfortunately, this mercy has not extended to Willis, who proves Hudson Hawk was no fluke in the sequel-no-one-asked-for, The Whole Ten Yards.

I'm not sure what formula was used to greenlight this followup to 2000's The Whole Nine Yards.

That movie -- which paired Willis as Jimmy 'The Tulip' Tudeski and Matthew Perry as scared-rabbit Nicholas 'Oz' Oseransky (funny names, eh?) -- had only modest box office and middling reviews.

But what flimsy pretext do you need when you've got surefire laughs like tough-guy Willis in bunny slippers or

Perry pondering the horrifying possibility that his best buddy had drunken anal sex with him?

The plot, such as it is, finds the troubled Jimmy the Tulip living what should be the good life in Mexico with his hitwoman girlfriend Jill (Amanda Peet) while Oz runs his dental office in L.A. Meanwhile, Laszlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollak) -- the boss of the, ahem, Hungarian mafia -- is released from jail.

Laszlo's mission: To avenge the death of his son by kidnapping Oz's wife (Natasha Henstridge), so that Oz can lead Laszlo and his comical henchmen to Jimmy the Tulip. Jimmy and Oz, however, turn the tables by kidnapping Laszlo's other son Strabo (Frank Collison).

Got all that?

Good. Then I can stop thinking about it.

This standoff continues interminably, with Willis breaking the nonexistent tension every so often by slapping someone in the head.

For his part, Perry -- the consummate sitcom-bot after 10 years of tic-acting on Friends -- uses every flailing hand motion and over-the-top facial expression in his repertoire in a vain attempt to squeeze laughs from a stone.

And Kevin Pollack?

Gawd, for a funny guy, he's sure in some lame movies.

Speaking with a Hungarian accent unlike any accent ever heard on Earth, he managed to elicit one or two chuckles from me -- and not because they gave him a less-dead script than the other guys.

He just has natural comic timing, something the "marquee" names in The Whole Ten Yards wouldn't recognize if it hit them between the eyes.

The upside of all this -- I'm willing to bet no one will have to go through the trouble of coming up with a sequel title with the word "Eleven" in it.

(This film is rated 14-A)

More Movie Reviews