The Ten
(MA) Madman DVD

I know Winona Ryder was in some legal trouble awhile back but I had no idea things had gotten this bad — in The Ten, she ends up in a consummated relationship with a ventriloquist dummy.

Throughout the film my major response was a feeling of bewilderment and embarrassment: why did so many wealthy and successful people (Jessica Alba, Winona Ryder, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Liev Schreiber, Ron Silver and Oliver Platt) agree to this film?

It couldn’t have been the script.

The Ten consists of crude, lowest common denominator comedy shorts that are sometimes loosely related to the Ten Commandments.

Paul Rudd (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) is painful to watch as he introduces each vignette with an ongoing routine about nagging wives and infidelity.

On the one or two occasions I found myself unintentionally laughing I also found I was beating my head against the wall.

Conservative Christians will find every second blasphemous and offensive. Everyone else will just find it offensively unfunny.

Lyndal Irons