'THE Whole Ten Yards" is a dumb, pointless sequel to the enjoyable 2000 black comedy "The Whole Nine Yards." The original, about a dentist befriended by a hit-man neighbor, boasted stretches of quirky, breezy freshness; this one is sour and stale throughout.

Hollywood hackwork even by the standards of "Grumpier Old Men" director Howard Deutch, "Ten Yards" is a labor of greed that reeks of contempt for the audience.

Bereft of inspiration, the agonizingly witless screenplay - blamed by the credits on George Gallo - resorts to pathetic cheap jokes about flatulence and impotence, lame slapstick and that juvenile gag about the horror of two men waking up naked in the same bed.

The movie begins with marital tension pulling apart the two couples formed at the end of the first movie. In exile in Mexico, Bruce Willis' retired assassin Jimmy Tudeski has become a cooking-obsessed house-husband, much to the irritation of his wife, Jill (Amanda Peet).

Jimmy's former neighbor, Oz Oseransky (Matthew Perry), has relocated his dental practice to L.A. and would be enjoying life with gorgeous bride Cynthia (Natasha "Species" Henstridge), who is Jimmy's ex-wife, if he weren't pathologically obsessed with defending their home against gangsters.

He may be paranoid, but Lazlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollak), the father of the gangster killed in the first film, has been released from prison and wants revenge for his son's death.

None of it makes any sense, and worse, it doesn't feel like the filmmakers cared.

There are inexplicable scenes that hint at crude cutting, including one in which Oz looks outside his motel room and is horrified by an empty parking space - but in the next scene, the characters are shown walking calmly to a parked car.



Peet's character is whinier than in the original, but she manages to make her lines and behavior believable - an achievement that speaks of real talent.

Willis, on the other hand, looks terrible, as if he's been suffering from a mortal illness. He never gets a chance to hint at the genuine menace that made his character effective in the first movie; instead, he's forced to do lots of unconvincing sobbing.

And Perry plays a more irritating version of his Chandler character from "Friends," and there are few laughs to be had from his relentless pratfalls.