The Ten
Directed by David Wain
There’s nothing snobbish about tagging The Ten as a stupid movie. Beyond a doubt, it is a stupid movie—and intended as such—but artistic standards exist even within a realm of sophomoric shenanigans. Vulgarity isn’t a passkey for excusing undercooked humor; bad taste comedy still has an obligation to provoke laughter. It happens that the numeric title of The Ten inadvertently represents the small tally of guffaws throughout its cumbersome 90 minutes.
The movie relies on a concept with a fair amount of potential, although no semblance of originality. Taking cues from Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog series, The Ten offers as many vignettes, each supposedly centered around specific laws chiseled onto the Ten Commandments. I say “supposedly” because the strategy never ventures into the domain of religious satire or relevant comedic terrain. Funnyman Paul Rudd acts as host, standing before a large cartoon relic with the laws of Sunday school yore writ large, but his introductions contain little more than offhand gestures in the direction of the skits’ prevailing theological directives. The results have only a passing connection to the biblical hook.
None of these contemporary tales explores or subverts any sort of thematic or moral codes (in the vein of Monty Python’s Life of Brian or Meaning of Life), revealing a project devoid of purpose.
Even The Producers demonstrate awareness that its giddy confrontation with anti-Semitic constructions represents large-scale chutzpah. The Ten, however, doesn’t have the polish that would make it a worthy joker in the ancient dialogue instigated by the Commandments. Rather than being gleefully subversive, the travesty is content as a work of obliviousness. You have to pay attention to catch the lessons in each story, but finding the fabric of the events just deadens their impact. Commandment yarn No. 2 (taking the Lord’s name in vain, according to Roman Catholic and Lutheran traditions) follows a meek librarian (Gretchen Mol) on her journey to Mexico, where she loses her virginity during a passionate tryst with a bearded native (Justin Theroux) who turns out to be Jesus. The plot culminates with Mol’s character in the sack with her husband, still thinking about her earlier love, uncontrollably shouting, “Jesus!” Get it?
There’s a level of cleverness suggested by the punchline that harkens back to early Woody Allen, but the individual jokes are marred by a wave of uninspired non sequiturs—and a confusion of ideological origins. While director David Wain and longstanding collaborators like Rudd come from Jewish backgrounds, the Commandment send-ups in The Ten are varied enough to be considered non-denominational, which makes the whole thing seem non-inventive.
The production relies on a loony backbone that brands it as a stoner comedy. So it’s unsurprising that the exclusively satisfying comedy is generated by random, insignificant gags, like a romantic narrator with a penchant for repeating the word “vagina” during an erotic sequence. Wain’s direction features some nifty double takes, (a dummy act that turns out to be an administrative assistant and an alleged little person that’s just a guy on his knees both stuck with me). But the overarching misdirected crudeness of the shorts overwhelms occasional glimpses of observant humor.
The anti-adultery bit finds a smiley prisoner (Rob Corddry) lusting after a “married” inmate (Ken Marino, as a convicted doctor who kills an unborn child “as a goof”). The whole thing is staged as a ludicrous rape fantasy, with the lewd joke over before the scenario plays out to its predictable and discomfiting conclusion.
Unlike his witty portrayal of summer camp nostalgia in the cult hit, Wet Hot American Summer, Wain doesn’t prove himself worthy of the ideas embodied by his subject matter. The Ten doesn’t disrespect the Commandments or challenge them. It mindlessly basks in the shadow of their menacing presence. Rudd puts it best, late in the film, as his character describes his apartment to a former flame as a “dark void with stone tablets.” Lacking a steady hand, this flimsy amalgam of bad jokes is without form and void.
