FilmCritic.com review by Chris Cabin

In a sane, level-headed and clear-eyed world, early '90s sketch group The State (also a TV show) would still be practicing their ambitious and absurd brand of screwball comedy. Sadly, Scooter Libby gets fresh air and sunshine while the boys and girls of The State have been relegated to obscurity, scattering like cockroaches in a well-lit kitchen to different comedic prospects. Most of the members found their way to Comedy Central's cannily-hilarious Reno 911! where State leads Thomas Lennon, Ben Garant, and Kerri Kenney are series cornerstones. Almost every other member of the troupe has made a recurring or cameo spot on the program but the effect has never been as lively or precarious as the best moments of The State.

With a few celebrities on board, the group assembles (with a few exceptions) for key member David Wain's The Ten, a foul-mouthed, dirty-as-diapers, Republican-baiting retelling of the Ten Commandments. The stories are stitched together by a loose narrative thread involving a man (Paul Rudd) serving as narrator who is leaving his wife (Famke Janssen) for a younger ditz (Jessica Alba).

A natural symptom of films structured by sketch-comedy troupes is the episodic choppiness of the film's narrative. Wisely, Wain picks a subject that relates to this structure and does his best to string them together in a loose thematic construct. As expected, some commandments are just plain funnier than others. The funnier episodes bubble over with erratic wit: an animated rhino's travels, Winona Ryder falling in love with a ventriloquist dummy, Liev Schreiber squaring-off against Joe Lo Truglio to see who can get more MRI machines, Rob Corddry and Ken Marino falling in love in prison, Gretchen Mol having a wild affair with Jesus Christ (the ever-elusive Justin Theroux).

You've got to give credit to Wain and his cast that more than 50 percent of these sketches don't suck. With the exception of a flimsy Woody Allen spoof and a plodding take on "Honor Thy Father and Mother" that finds two black kids believing their father is Arnold Schwarzenegger, the sketches take pleasures in detailed laughs that consider tone and delivery above the actual setup of the joke. In fact, the biggest laughs come from moments as insignificant as a doctor (Ken Marino) describing medical malfeasance as "just a goof" to a hothead detective (Liev Schreiber).

Of course, very few of these moments match-up towards the more classic moments of The State, but most of them equal or eclipse Wain's previous effort, Wet Hot American Summer (although nothing here measures up to Christopher Meloni's mumbling camp chef). The comedy here is socially relevant in only the slightest of ways, allowing for the troupe's inherent silliness to loosen up any pretentious idea of satirical grandstanding. The best moments, however, comes when the absurdity is rooted in stereotype, like Thomas Lennon's classic Old Man sketch. Still, I guess there's no getting around the fact that both Moses and Kieslowski (The Decalogue) are rolling in their graves.

The DVD includes copious deleted scenes and outtakes, a commentary track, an interview with cast and crew, and a making-of featurette.

Sundance review by Scott Weinberg

1. A guy leaps from an airplane, smashes into the ground, survives and becomes a national sensation -- despite the fact that he's now stuck in the ground forever.
2. A mousy-yet-hot virgin (Gretchen Mol!) has a fling in Mexico with Jesus Christ.
3. A doctor intentionally leaves a surgical tool inside a patient as a "goof," but is sent to jail when she dies.
4. A pair of neighbors care about nothing else besides owning one more cat-scan machine than the other.
5. A white woman with two black sons explains that their father is none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger -- which still doesn't make a whole lot of sense. (Especially considering that Ahnold is played here by Oliver Platt.)
6. Rob Corddry covets his neighbor's wife, which wouldn't be all that weird if the characters weren't in an all-male prison.
7. A newly-wed Winona Ryder falls madly in love with a ventriloquist's dummy.
8. Animated sequence! A lying rhino learns about "crying wolf" the (very) hard way.
9. A suburban husband skips church and starts a crazy trend that involves completely naked men and the musical stylings of Roberta Flack.
10. Plus we get a framing story in which Rudd alienates his lovely wife (Famke Janssen) so he can run off with Jessica Alba ... and then Dianne Weist.
    
    So clearly we're talking about some really wild, weird and "out there" comedic hijinks, and how much you're able to enjoy The Ten will entirely depend on your own tolerance for random silliness and seriously strange goofiness. As a "movie" movie, the thing's kind of a mess, but as a novelty item, I'd say there's just enough here to warrant a look. In addition to the playful performers mentioned above, director David Wain has also enlisted the likes of Liev Schreiber, Adam Brody, Kerri Kenney and Justin Theroux. Co-writer Ken Marino also contributes a fair share of loopy lunacy.
    
    Basically I'd call The Ten a "glass half full" experience. While some of the skits yield precisely zero in the laughs department (far as I'm concerned, anyway), a few of 'em hit me square in the funny bone and had me chuckling like a dork. (For example, skit #1 is pretty damn terrible, but it's followed by another one that's spot-on and quite humorous indeed.) Plus I've always found Paul Rudd to be an effortlessly amusing guy, and since he has the most screen time in The Ten, I was able to wring a few extra giggles out of his sequences. Other standouts include Corddry, Marino and Theroux .. and who knew Liev Schreiber could be so damn funny?
    
    Obviously not a mainstream-style comedy that'll appeal to a wide audience of braying knuckleheads (like, say, Meet the Fockers), The Ten feels a little like a "cult flick" waiting to happen. It's not as consistently amusing as Wain's Wet Hot American Summer -- but it's also quite a bit funnier than your average episode of Saturday Night Live. And there's a really silly musical number at the end that I really liked.

-- Cinematical.com 

MetroMix Chicago review

By Tasha Robinson

1½ stars (out of four)

Comedians David Wain and Ken Marino loosely based their sketch-comedy film "The Ten" on Krzysztof Kieslowski's "The Decalogue," which explains why the two projects are so much alike: a series of brief stories illustrating the place of the biblical 10 Commandments in the modern world. A series of sketches that interlock through recurring characters and actors. A well-crafted, thoughtful approach to religion and the human condition....

Oh. Wait.

Well, two out of three isn't bad. And for the kind of dumb comedy that wallows in prison-rape gags and animated poop, "The Ten" is relatively dry, high-concept humor. But its scattershot approach doesn't communicate anything substantial, either about the commandments or the people who do or don't live by them. The theme is just an excuse--sometimes an awkwardly attenuated one--for a series of random one-note comic sketches about recreational nudity and sex with puppets.

Paul Rudd semi-introduces each segment while also playing out his own story line, a dire, comedy-killing series of confrontations with his bitter wife (Famke Janssen) and ditzy mistress (Jessica Alba). Some of the skits build directly from each other: the "thou shalt not kill" segment, where a doctor (Marino) deliberately leaves a tool inside a patient "as a goof," naturally progresses into a sketch where a beaming prison inmate (Rob Corddry) "covets" Marino, now the "wife" of his cellmate, Big Buster. (The single joke there is that Corddry alternates graphic rape terminology with lovebird talk more appropriate to a wistful teen romance.)

Other bits mostly stand alone, like the animated segment about a lying rhino, or the energetically ludicrous sequence where two competitive neighbors (Liev Schreiber and Joe Lo Truglio) one-up each other by packing their homes with CAT-scan machines. At its best, as in these two bits, "The Ten" relies on the playful absurdism of a Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker movie, keeping the action zippy and tight.

But Wain and Marino's humor often edges more toward the deadpan discomfort humor of the Rudd segments, which are more embarrassing than funny. Wain and Marino both emerged from sketch-comedy shows (notably "The State" and "Stella," whose veterans show up here in force), and it shows in the distracted way "The Ten" changes tone every few minutes, ranging from lowbrow gross-out gags to elevated language to a big, sloppy musical number. Inevitably, some of the material works. But where Kieslowski's work always had a goal and a sense for how real people think, nothing about "The Ten" suggests that the filmmakers ever thought any further than the next meager, uncomfortable titter.

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'The Ten'

Directed by David Wain; screenplay by David Wain and Ken Marino; photographed by Yaron Orbach; edited by Eric Kissack; music by Craig Wedren; production design by Mark White; produced by Morris S. Levy and Jonathan Stern. A THINKfilm release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:35. MPAA rating: R (for language, drug material, nudity, pervasive crude sexual content).

Jeff - Paul Rudd

Gretchen - Famke Janssen

Dr. Glenn - Ken Marino

Duane - Rob Corddry

Kelly - Winona Ryder

Buy "The Ten" film soundtrack by Craig Wedren from eMusic.com

"Fanfare"

"Two feet firm"

"Mexico parts 1 & 2"

"El fuego mi amor"

"Mexico part 3"

"Catscan"

"The world's shortest ballad" -- Paul Rudd 

"Forgive me love

"Dummy"

"Hotel room"

"Lying rhino medley"

"Good prison suite"

"Written in stone" -- cast of "The Ten"

"The Ten Theme" -- Mr. Blue 

"The end of the end of The Ten" -- Peter Salett