This movie has everything going for it – written by Ken Marino (The State) and David Wain (Stella, Wet Hot American Summer) and headlined by an ensemble cast of Hollywood stars and comedy favorites. This should have been an unstoppable farce. But there’s a hitch. It’s not funny.

Maybe it’s a case of too many hands stirring the pot. Maybe it was just a bad idea from the start. But the movie loses interest after the first vignette. There are 10 altogether – one for each of the Ten Commandments – connected by a wraparound story involving Jeff (Paul Rudd) and his failing relationship with Gretchen (Famke Janssen) and his misguided affair with Liz (Jessica Alba). His introductions for each story are non sequiturs, failing to tie the vignettes into something cohesive. Even Tales from the Darkside: The Movie had an overall story that at least introduced its three episodes within the narrative. But perhaps this wouldn’t be an issue if Jeff’s scenes were funny.

That’s the same problem with the segments themselves, which briefly feature an absurdist interpretation of a commandment. A vignette on coveting thy neighbor’s goods involves two wealthy suburban husbands who always have to do outdo the other, even if that means competing head-to-head to see who can buy the most CAT scan machines. In another, a doctor kills his patient by intentionally leaving a pair of surgical scissors inside her ribcage “as a goof.”

The 5 to 10 minutes allotted to each story is an awkward period of time to pull off a good joke. (Saturday Night Live has run into the same problem for about 30 years now.) The premises are drawn out and beaten to a pulp, like a 40-page short story by David Sedaris.

The one vignette that’s pretty inspired is the commandment that warns against stealing, starring Winona Ryder as Kelly, a woman on her honeymoon who passionately falls in love with a bad ventriloquist’s wooden puppet. Eventually, she steals the dummy and has a sex scene that most people would have never expected to see from Ryder. Zachary Jones
August 4, 2007