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Here’s a fun movie fact for you. Next time the setting of the movie or TV show you are watching is in Detroit or Pittsburgh, there is a good chance it is actually filmed in Canada. However, the filmmakers behind The Whole Nine Yards decided to stop pulling the wool over the audience’s eyes and set the film in the neighboring country that gives out tax breaks for movies like free candy. Why am I mentioning this? Because there is not a whole lot else to say that’s groundbreaking about The Whole Nine Yards. However, banality is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when your film is aiming to garner laughs and not much more.

With this weekend’s funny spy comedy This Means War (featuring my comedy love Chelsea Handler … and also, can I just mention how attractive Reese Witherspoon looks in black-and-white on the posters for the film?) crashing into theaters, I figured I might take a look back on another spy/hitman film released this same week 12 years ago – The Whole Nine Yards.

Starring Matthew Perry in his Friends heyday, he plays Nicholas "Oz" Oseransky, a congenial dentist who seems to have everyone in the world adore him except his monstrous wife, Sophie (Rosanna Arquette), who’d rather see him dead. The couple’s average routine gets disrupted once Oz realizes that his new neighbor is the famed contract killer Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski (Bruce Willis). Sophie puts Oz up to snitch on Jimmy’s hide-away location to the Chicago mobsters (Kevin Pollak) looking for revenge on him. However, Oz likes Jimmy and refuses to give up his location – although he has no problems shaking up with Jimmy’s ex-wife Cynthia (Natasha Henstridge). When everyone finally converges, the sparks fly as everyone has a hit on their head. The only question is who is hired to pull the trigger on whom.

I really enjoyed The Whole Nine Yards. Sure, the Mitchell Kapner (Romeo Must Die) screenplay only goes half the distance with overly convoluted plot turns just for the sake that there is not much more development with the characters. However, the actors go the titular nine yards and back.

Perry is hilarious as the panicky Oz, who finds himself in slapstick situations. Bawdier than his role on friends, Perry doesn’t show a different side of himself to the audience, but solidifies his reputation as a comedic actor, rising above the material given here. Rosanna Arquette is memorable as an accentuated snobby wife who is more interested in Oz’s life insurance money than him. Amanda Peet makes best with her screen time, stealing scenes from Bruce Willis. While I won’t give away the twist (even though the movie has been out for over 12 years), her performance gets indelible in the final act where it turns out that she isn’t as she appears.

However, by the poster and the first billing, it is clear that The Whole Nine Yards was built as a starring vehicle for Bruce Willis to show off a different side. While I (and most of the movie-going public) recognize Willis as John McClane, I was surprised to see his adept comedic ability. Serving as his first blatantly funny role, Willis successfully manages to generate laughs, although he is upstaged by the aforementioned Peet and matched by Perry, who has more of a depth in the field of sitcoms (which isn’t too far off from how the film plays). It’s a shame that Willis never went back to comedy and has continued with action films, most of which have recently gone straight-to-DVD (I’m surprised his name doesn’t carry around much weight anymore unless it is a part of an ensemble like the upcoming G.I. Joe and Expendables 2).

Director Jonathan Lynn of My Cousin Vinny doesn’t do much of anything, instead letting the actors take control and picking the cuts where they are grinning the least. Although they might have hated each other, the cast seems to have enjoyed filming the movie together quite a bit, giving The Whole Nine Yards a positive energy that makes it feel a little less generic than it really is.

Released over President’s Day Weekend, the film wound up on the top of the box office. It edged the much more expensive and hyped Meg Ryan-Diane Keaton-Lisa Kudrow (Friends!) starrer Hanging Up by slightly more than $100,000, but in the long run, it pulled much further ahead.

After opening with $13.7 million, good word-of-mouth and light competition kept the film on the pole position for three weeks. With a few solid frames, The Whole Nine Yards wrapped up with an impressive $57.3 million finish and did a little less overseas, making it a hit. Critics were split on the R-rated film, as it sits at 45% on Rottentomatoes.com. While most reviews praised the acting, they note that the film felt more like the first season of a sitcom, feeling that the overly dark humor was depressing. Although the plot is dark, I still found it to have some perky charm to it, mainly due to the happy-go-lucky nature of Willis’ and Perry’s characters who perfectly juxtapose one another’s personalities.

The chain of events can be called inspired at best; The Whole Nine Yards manages to earn some chuckles at its cheaper moments. However, the biggest laughs come out of the smaller, subtler moments like when Willis perfectly deadpans his zingers followed by Perry stuttering out some lines in faux fear.

Four years later, someone thought it would be a good idea to make a sequel. Universally panned, The Whole Ten Yards (real clever title), made only a blip, grossing not much more than the opening weekend of the original.

Not every comedy can be smart, and this hitman laugher doesn’t have many brains to it. But what matters most to me is if a movie is satisfying, and in that aspect, it comes up while the whole nine yards.

Verdict: With Us
7 out of 10