Product Description: No one will mistake Jeff Reigert (Paul Rudd) for Moses or even Charlton Heston, but they all have something in common. Like Moses and Heston, Jeff's job is to introduce the world to the Ten Commandments. But, in David Wain's loopy comedy The Ten, he is not exactly the picture of virtue...In fact, surrounded as he is by gigantic replicas of the famous stone tablets, the genial host to this special presentation is so busy juggling wife Gretchen (Famke Janssen) and girlfriend (Jessica Alba) that he can barely get through a single commandment without breaking one himself. But that venality is part of the charm of this amiable, outrageous and frequently hilarious biblical parody. Wain and Marino use the commandments as an excuse to indulge in ridiculous, often surreal and sometimes tasteless humor... it lives up to the one unbendable commandment of comedy: It's funny. - Pam Grady, San Francisco Chronicle
Amazon.com: It's inevitable that a director with a sketch-comedy background, like The State's David Wain, would make a movie comprised of sketches. Written with his Wet Hot American Summer collaborator Ken Marino, The Ten brings the Big Man's commandments to life via 10 mini-movies or "stories," as host Paul Rudd calls them. (Rudd is joined by Famke Janssen, as his wife, and Jessica Alba, as his girlfriend.) The narratives rarely play out in a predictable manner, but laughs are in surprisingly short supply (possibly because each runs a few beats longer than necessary). Still, it's fun to see so many actors cast against type. In "Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of the Lord Thy God in Vain," Gretchen Mol's 35-year-old virgin falls for Justin Theroux's Mexican carpenter, while in "Thou Shalt Not Steal," Winona Ryder's newlywed falls for a ventriloquist's dummy--and runs off with the little wooden man. Unlike Krysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue, the acclaimed dramatic series inspired by the same source material, Wain and Marino have no trenchant observations to offer about modern morality. Their aim is to amuse. If that means references to prison rape ("Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife" with Marino and The Daily Show's Rob Corddry) and loose bowels (Aaron Augenblick's "Lying Rhino," the only animated vignette), so be it. As a reinvention of retro sketch fests, like Kentucky Fried Movie, The Ten falls short, but it's worth a look for the cast, which includes Liev Schreiber, Adam Brody, and Oliver Platt. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Randomly Fantastic! I ran across this movie on video on demand. My roomate and I laughed so hard we were crying. Our favorite is "thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife," but they are all hysterical.
Disclaimer: If you are a religious fanatic, a homophobe, or a "sheep", you will not enjoy this movie. That is to say that if you like mainstream comedy, you will HATE this movie. If you like sick, twisted, but brilliant comedy, it will be right up your alley!
David Wain Doesn't Disappoint David Wain, Ken Marino, and Paul Rudd do incredible work together. All three of their voices are very evident and if you're a fan of any of them, you'll like this.
You'll notice that people have a tendency to call it the worst movie they've ever seen, or rate it zero stars. The truth is the humor is so incredibly absurd that it won't appeal to everyone. If you go into it not wanting to like it, you probably won't.
I personally laughed the whole way. So has every audience I've seen it with. Some of the sketches are stronger than others (my personal favorite being any of the ones with Ken Marino's character, like Murder and Covet they neighbors wife) but I assure you if you keep an open mind, one of them will appeal to you.
Suckular at best Luckily, my boyfriend picked this up in the $5 bin at a discount store. If he had spent anymore on this soon-to-be door stopper, I would be irate. I'd donate this to Goodwill, but it seems unfair for someone else to be duped into buying this suckular movie.
I've seen and enjoyed "Wet Hot American Summer," so I thought that this film from David Wain would deliver..nope. The final scene is an absurd musical recap of the disjointed sketches. The finale just didn't work. I thought for certain that this was originally a musical/play penned by the writers, and adapted unsuccessfully into a film--I wanted desperately to think that this was not the intended product. Nope.
Skip this movie. Charlton Heston's Moses made me laugh more than this wannabe religious satire. I wish I could get back the 96 minutes that I spent on this film and go to church instead.
Anyone thinks this is funny, has no idea what funny is. This movie starts out in such a stupid, asinine way that I couldn't bare to watch any more. Hollywood sucks big time when it comes to comedy. "Hey, we have no idea what's funny. Let's make a comedy! Don't worry, the buying public are idiots, they'll buy anything."
They Better Hope There Are No DVD Players on Judgment Day I have no idea what kind of audience this movie was made for.
It's called THE TEN because it is supposedly satirizing the Ten Commandments, but it's painfully obviously that not one single person responsible for this movie has even read the actual Ten Commandments, let alone anything else biblical. At least the Monty Pyton guys did a little bit of research for their LIFE OF BRIAN.
Because of their lack of any comprehension of the commandments, they're incapable of producing a sketch remotely involving...let alone a sketch that's remotely funny.
So who are they trying to entertain? An audience with any religious awareness is going to be put off by the language, crudity and general blasphemy gleefully on display here. Any agnostics and athiests will be put off by both any religious references as well as the lack of any real comedy.
I feel bad for the people in this movie because I have this sick feeling that there will be a DVD player on Judgment Day...and THE TEN will be reviewed during the cast and crew's appearance in the dock. Man, I hope I'm not next in line.
This movie was so terrible that I actually felt bad for hating those Broken Lizard losers and their awful movies. That's a joke, by the way. The Broken Lizard losers are still grotesquely horrible.
So who would like this movie? Looking over the other reviews, I found one that seemed legitimate: her son was in the movie so she liked it. The rest of us...are on own.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
