The Ten

The twilight of the summer movie season has brought us The Ten, which is the brain child of a group of comedians who used to be on a sketch show called The State (The superiority of The State has already been documented on this site. If you need to be reminded of its comedic dominance please click here). Directed by David Wain and written by Ken Marino, the movie’s ten short films, each a meditation on one of the Ten Commandments, manage to include the talents of seemingly all of their former cast mates as well as a bevy of A/B list actors. While not exactly a finely crafted feature, The Ten brings an unconventional comic sensibility to the big screen and for this it deserves praise.

The “movie which is actually a series of related short films” thing has been done before. The Ten owes a great debt to Woody Allen’s addition to the genre, Everything That You Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask, a fact which is openly acknowledged in the ninth story. This format always creates products that are uneven by nature, with some segments more successful than others. Such is the case with The Ten; some moments surpass the hilarity of Wet Hot American Summer (The Staties brilliant take on 80’s summer camp movies) while others seem stale from the opening shot (there is no new comedic gold to be found in the topic of prison sex).
Joining the cast is a long list of actors who are quite famous. Many of the performances culled from these celebrities are effective (Liev Schreiber and the unaging Winona Ryder offer up particularly wonderful work), however, at several points it felt like these actors were making cameos instead of actually acting. The message seemed to be “Look at all of the famous people who think we are funny and want to be in our little movie.”

The salvation of this movie is the idiosyncratic sensibility that is brought to each of the film’s jokes. No gag is complete without the addition of a strong shot of absurdity. As it progresses from story to story you feel like you are bouncing around in a comedian’s imagination. The bonus is this imagination almost always provides a fresh alternative to the majority of the comic product on the market. The devoutly silly spirit of The Ten is what allows it to rise above its own shortcomings and be an enjoyable picture.