This week, everybody’s favorite multiethnic pothead duo – Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) – returns to the big screen for another reefer-laced comedic adventure courtesy of creators Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.

I’m very happy to see H&K get the sequel treatment, not only because I’m a huge fan of the original film, but also because – back when I was a full-time Play guy – I had a chance to chat with Hurwitz and Schlossberg, who even then were dreaming of following up their inventive, borderline absurdist stoner comedy with an even more ambitious Harold and Kumar movie. The writing partners not only got that sequel made, but they also got the chance to direct it – and being exceptionally nice, smart and funny guys (if I kiss enough ass, can I get a crack at scripting part three?) the opportunity seems extremely well-deserved. Here’s the thing, though: most early reviews of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, while surprisingly positive, have praised the film for its incisive political humor, rather than its stoner tendencies. Personally, I think it’s terrific that Hurwitz and Schlossberg have seemingly moved past the pot-and-potty jokes of the original H&K for some slightly more culturally relevant gags, but I hope that those who enjoyed the first film for its wacked-out drug humor don’t get, uh, burnt out on part two.

If you do happen to be seeking out a stoner comedy more of the shut-your-brain-off type, however, I can recommend one that’s very entertaining even if, like me, you see it stone-cold sober. Smiley Face, which played Sundance last year and is now available on dvd, is a very funny, very lightweight item from cult filmmaker Gregg Araki that just might be the ultimate pothead comedy. Why? Because moreso than any of the Cheech and Chong flicks, Dude, Where’s My Car, or even H&K, this one is almost completely plot-less, more of a stoned meander through Southern California than an actual narrative – in fact, I’m tempted to call it the "Ulysses" of pot movies, at the risk of offending lit scholars, stoners, and stoned lit scholars. At any rate, the film is a heck of a lot of fun.

Anna Faris, an actress I love to see in anything that doesn’t have the words “Scary” or “Movie” in its title, stars as Jane, a sweet but rather un-ambitious aspiring actress who’s more interested in her bed and her bong than in, you know, working. The film catches up with her one fine morning when, after a few breakfast bong hits, she scarfs a bunch of cupcakes baked by her creepy sci-fi nerd roommate Steve (That 70s Show’s Danny Masterson) and discovers not long after that the delicious treats were full of weed. Now stoned out of her mind, and with an electric bill to pay, an audition to make it to, and a plateful of pot-laced cupcakes to replace before Steve gets home, poor Jane must venture out into the world and accomplish these few otherwise simple tasks made near-impossible by the ganj-induced haze she’s stumbled her way into.

Smiley Face is Faris’s movie from frame one, and she gets to show off a wide range of comedic skills despite the fact that her character is baked beyond human comprehension – in a lesser actress’s hands, the “I’m so stoned” act would get tiresome over 80 minutes, but Faris is both endearing and very convincing as the kind of girl that occasionally gets caught up staring at the ceiling for hours at a time. The supporting cast is full of familiar faces, each one popping in and out of Jane’s misadventures for a scene or two – there’s John Krasinski, a straight-laced friend of Steve’s who drags Jane along to his dentist’s appointment; Adam Brody as a dreadlocked dealer who discusses Reaganomics and threatens to repossess Jane’s beloved pillow-top mattress if she doesn’t pay up all her unpaid pot debts; Danny Trejo and John Cho (Harold himself!) as a couple of sausage-factory employees who discover Jane passed out in the back of their truck, and so on.

The film is never anything less than silly and inconsequential, and that’s a big part of its charm – any big ideas or major twists of plot would have just gotten in the way of its lazy, breezy vibe. The ending is a bit of a misfire (and actually sort of a downer) but otherwise Smiley Face definitely earns its place near the top of the stoner-movie canon, and could really catch on as a cult favorite if the right people on the right substances happen to catch it at the right time.

Here's another late-posted Movie Match for you, this one written before Forgetting Sarah Marshall wound up getting beat at the box office by the forgettable-looking Forbidden Kingdom. If you haven't yet seen Sarah, I can't recommend it highly enough -- it definitely lives up to the hype, and will hopefully "have legs" at the box office like most of the other Judd Apatow-produced comedies have.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: producer Judd Apatow may be the current king of R-rated Hollywood comedy, but if New England’s own Peter and Bobby Farrelly hadn’t paved the way, then critically acclaimed, crowd-pleasing yukfests like Superbad, Knocked Up, and this week’s seemingly destined-for-greatness Forgetting Sarah Marshall probably never would have happened.

I’ve got no beef with Apatow or the stable of up-and-coming film comedians – like Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and Sarah Marshall scribe/star Jason Segal – that have suddenly become mega-popular under his tutelage, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the Farrellys, whose first three films (Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There’s Something About Mary), proved beyond any doubt that genuine, old-fashioned romance could share the screen with gags involving body fluids, functions, etc. Those movies, in this fan’s humble opinion, also outdo everything put out thus far by the Apatow camp in terms of sheer laughs – and this is coming from a guy who hovered dangerously close to incontinence from chuckling so hard at Superbad (if only more films could truly be called pee-your-pants funny…).

Anywho, Sarah Marshall is already netting the expected critical raves, and if it isn’t a big hit I’ll definitely be surprised. One thing, though – for some reason, every time I see the trailer for this movie, I can’t help but be reminded of last year’s misbegotten Farrellys effort The Heartbreak Kid, another sweet/gross romantic comedy set mostly (like Sarah) at a tropical vacation resort. And, unfortunately, thinking of The Heartbreak Kid makes me a little heartbroken myself, since the movie received so little love from, well, everyone.

I’m not saying that Heartbreak was perfect in any way, but the little-seen, very-little-respected film marked the Farrellys’ return to the go-for-broke adult humor that made them a household name, and even reunited them with Mary star Ben Stiller. I had high hopes for the flick, and although it promised a lot more than it delivered, I think it’s still worth catching for anyone who enjoyed their early work.

A remake of a 1972 rom-com that starred Cybill Shepherd and Charles Grodin, Heartbreak stars Ben Stiller as forty-year-old Eddie, a longtime commitment-phobe who’s never found a woman he’d be comfortable settling down with. As luck or contrivance would have it, he soon “meets cute” (to borrow a phrase from Roger Ebert) with an impossibly attractive and lovable environmental researcher named Lila (Malin Akerman) and, after a whirlwind courtship, ends up marrying her and heading off to Mexico to honeymoon.

Unfortunately for Eddie, overnight – or rather, in the course of the newlyweds’ drive down to Cabo – Lila turns from dream girl to nightmare; he discovers in short order that his new bride is a debt-ridden former raging cokehead with a deviated septum and a string of skeevy ex-boyfriends, is dangerous as a rabid animal in the sack, has some particularly unsavory flatulence issues, and perhaps worst of all, is a huge Spice Girls fan. After she contracts the nastiest sunburn in cinema history on their first day of wedded bliss, Eddie ventures off on his own at the resort – where he meets the lovely and unattached Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), who’d be a perfect woman for him to settle down with had he not already tied the knot less than 48 hours earlier.

That’s a great plot for a comedy right there, and a perfect framework on which to hang the kind of gross-out humor that has become the Farrelly trademark. Unfortunately, the film is only partially successful at mining its potential, rendering this a subpar Farrelly outing at best. Still, there’s plenty to laugh at here, from Eddie’s pervy septaugenarian father – played, of course, by Jerry Stiller – to an interlude in a pastoral Mexican village where Stiller and Monaghan pet some friendly rodents and enjoy a “Mexican Folklore Dance” that is far less culturally stimulating than it sounds.

Stiller essentially plays the same character he’s been riffing on since Mary and Flirting With Disaster, but his female co-stars really pick up the slack – Monaghan, as in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, pulls off the idealized dream-girl schtick pretty damn well, and Akerman deserves credit for being one of the most abrasive and unbearable characters I’ve ever seen in a comedy. I’m sure she’s a swell person in real life, and I look forward to seeing her in the long-awaited upcoming Watchmen movie, but based on her convincing work here I’ll bet the poor woman couldn’t get a date for months after the movie’s release (maybe in that respect it’s a good thing that this failed at the box office).

I can’t stand by this movie quite as enthusiastically as most of the others I’ve written about in this column, but with so many comedies lately seemingly getting by without a single well-executed gag, I can honestly say that The Heartbreak Kid made me laugh out loud enough times to win me over. It may not make you forget Sarah Marshall, but it’s definitely worth a look.

In less than ten years of making movies, writer/director David Ayer has done a bang-up job of staking out his thematic territory – if you’re looking for a gritty, hard-edged crime drama set on the mean streets of L.A., he’s your man.

Though the South Central, Los Angeles-raised Ayer got his first scripting credits on a WWII action pic (2000’s decent U-571) and an entertainingly cheeseball blockbuster (the original Fast and the Furious), he really came into his own with 2001’s Training Day, a tough-minded inversion of the usual buddy-cop flick clichés about a morally corrupt LAPD detective (Denzel Washington) and his hapless new partner (Ethan Hawke). Bolstered by Washington’s fearsome, Oscar-winning performance, that film (directed by Antoine Fuqua) set down the template for much of Ayer’s most recent work, and he’s been successfully riffing on the same subject matter ever since. This week, he steps behind the camera to direct Street Kings – another L.A.-set cop thriller, this one made from a screenplay co-written by James “L.A. Confidential” Ellroy. Keanu Reeves heads up the cast as a vice detective searching for his partner’s killers and uncovering some dirty business within his own department; Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, and rappers Common and The Game co-star.

Street Kings is Ayer’s second directorial outing, and his first time working with a script that isn’t his own – but if his 2006 debut, Harsh Times, is any indication, he’s as dangerous in the director’s chair as he is with a MacBook.

Harsh Times, which Ayer actually wrote prior to Training Day, is a violent slice-of- life revolving around ex-Army Ranger Jim Davis (Christian Bale), who’s returned to his home turf of L.A. looking for a job in law enforcement. Though he shares his name with the decidedly unthreatening creator of Garfield, however, this Jim is no pussycat – in fact, he’s a total hard case, mentally unstable from his wartime experiences and prone to violent outbursts and criminal behavior. Hooking back up with his slightly more straight-laced buddy Mike (Freddy Rodriguez), Jim ends up blowing his LAPD interview and eventually resorts to petty crime in the old neighborhood; Mike’s career-minded girlfriend Sylvia (Eva Longoria), meanwhile, is immediately suspicious of Jim, and afraid of the influence he has over her already jobless and aimless (but decent) boyfriend. Violently set off by his rejection from the police department, Jim turns increasingly aggressive, lashing out at drug dealers and starting trouble with ex-girlfriends even as he considers a job offering from the Department of Homeland Security (who want to send him down to Columbia for some under-the-radar dirty work suiting his brutal skill set).

Less plot-driven than Training Day, Harsh Times is a more personal, character-centric effort for Ayer, and while it lacks the relentless intensity of the earlier film it mostly makes up for it with its sharply observed characterizations and sequences that simmer with nervous energy – he skillfully allows the lazy rhythms of Jim and Mike’s directionless trips around the city to flare up into violent confrontations throughout. Sure, you’ll know from frame one that the film will end up in bloody Taxi Driver-ish territory by the final reel, but there’s a realistic edge to the characters – especially Jim – that anchors Harsh Times in frightening believability.

Bale, as usual, is terrific in the lead role; he’s played his share of unhinged characters before (American Psycho, The Machinist, The Prestige, etc.), but Jim is an entirely different breed, lacking any kind of focus or clarity and taking out his aggressions sporadically at the slightest provocation. Also quite good is Rodriguez, whose ostensible “straight-man” role is more complex morally than Hawke’s rather Boy Scout-ish Training Day character. It’s pretty clear from the get-go that Jim is headed for trouble, but the film generates a lot of suspense as to just how far Mike is willing to follow him; Rodriguez does a terrific job of balancing his good-guy tendencies with his loyalty to his friend and capability to break the law as Jim does.

Altogether, the film offers a fascinating portrait of damaged characters in a burnt-out urban environment, one that Ayer knew firsthand and translates to the screen in ways that, at their best, bring to mind the work of Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, the Hughes Brothers, et al. He’s yet to make a perfect film, but I think if he continues on this trajectory of urban crime dramas Ayer could at some point make the Taxi Driver or French Connection for our generation – though even if he gives up that particular tack after Street Kings, he’s displayed enough talent to make him a filmmaker worth following whatever he takes on.

Every Hollywood career has had its share of both triumph and tragedy, but give George Clooney some credit – his has leaned pretty heavily toward the former.

Yes, he unfortunately is the guy who donned the be-nippled Bat-suit in the abysmal Batman & Robin, but aside from a few lesser duds here and there his filmography boasts a pretty high ratio of stellar projects – from last year’s terrific legal thriller Michael Clayton to late 90s masterpieces Three Kings and Out of Sight. Clooney’s track record behind the camera is even better – he actually netted a Best Director nomination for his second film, Good Night, and Good Luck – which bodes well for this week’s Clooney-helmed release Leatherheads: a rough-and-tumble period football flick that’s also a screwball romantic comedy.

For all of Clooney’s success, however, I’ve always felt like some of his films never connected with audiences or critics the way they should have. Here they are, in no particular order:

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

Clooney can’t take all the credit for the awesomeness of his directorial debut – with a script by the great Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation., Being John Malkovich) and Sam Rockwell playing the lead, he was in pretty good shape from the get-go. Still, as first efforts go, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a minor miracle, a whip-smart and highly offbeat black comedy about possibly deluded "Gong Show" creator Chuck Barris (Rockwell), who claimed to have led a double life as a covert operative for the CIA.

An energetic and visually rich film about a one-of-a-kind character, Confessions is a self-reflexive comedy, a bizarre spy thriller, and an oddly moving tale about self-image all at once, and provides enjoyable change-of-pace roles for Clooney, as Barris’s gruff CIA handler, Julia Roberts, as an alluring Company woman, and Drew Barrymore, as the television impresario/international superspy’s long-suffering girlfriend.

O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)

This stupendously original Coen Brothers outing might be better known for its terrific vintage/modern bluegrass soundtrack than for the movie itself, but it’s actually become one of my favorites in their entire canon (and that’s saying a lot).

Kinda-sorta inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, O Brother is set in the Depression-era South and follows a charismatic ex-con named Ulysses (Clooney) who teams up with two other chain-gang escapees (Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro, both great) to journey back to his wife and family and retrieve some buried treasure en route. Their comedic misadventures along the way – involving everything from a devious one-eyed Bible salesman (John Goodman) to the trio’s inadvertent brush with fame as a bluegrass group called The Soggy Bottom Boys – make for some of the most enjoyably silly Coen comedy since their early hit Raising Arizona, but the gorgeously photographed film somehow manages to live up to its epic inspiration by the end, too.

Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)

It’s true, this series is little more than a live-action GQ photo spread with a little sub-Guy Ritchie heist mayhem thrown in, but as pure popcorn cinema, you could do a lot worse than the Ocean’s flicks – especially the most recent one.

The most laid-back, low-stakes film in the series, Ocean’s Thirteen isn’t really even about a robbery; in this one, playboy Danny Ocean (Clooney) and his all-star lineup of cronies are out simply to ruin the opening of scumbag Vegas mogul Al Pacino’s luxury hotel-casino, after he screws over their ailing pal Reuben (Elliott Gould, still one of my favorite people in the movies).

Throwing plausibility and seriousness out the window, Ocean’s Thirteen is the snappiest and goofiest of the trilogy, with highlights including Matt Damon wearing a hilarious prosthetic nose and the bumbling twosome of Casey Affleck and Scott Caan inadvertently sparking a labor dispute in Mexico (while involved in a patently ridiculous scheme involving magnetized dice).

The Peacemaker (1997)

A pre-9/11 “serious” action movie about terrorists plotting on U.S. soil, The Peacemaker seems a little quaint these days, but the film – the first release from Dreamworks, actually – still packs a punch thanks to Mimi Leder’s tight, tense direction and the couldn’t-miss pairing of Clooney and Nicole Kidman. He plays a cocky Special Forces officer, she’s a buttoned-down government scientist, and they’re both on the trail of some nukes stolen from a former Soviet state, which – of course – eventually end up on American soil.

No, this isn’t the most original action movie you’ll ever see, but it’s a cut above Hollywood’s usual Tom Clancy ripoff, and suggests that Clooney could have been a credible action hero if that’s the direction he wanted his career to go in. And although some folks, like Roger Ebert, weren’t crazy about the film’s clichéd defusing-the-bomb finale, for my money the ol’ “red digital readout” sequence has rarely been executed as intensely as it is here.

The Perfect Storm (2000)

This one did decent box office and earned a few solid reviews, but I’ve always felt that it deserved a level of appreciation it somehow never got – it has tons more heart than your average “big summer movie.”

Based on Sebastian Junger’s nonfiction bestseller, the film concerns the crew of the Andrea Gail, a Gloucester-based swordfish boat that gets caught up in a cataclysmic Nor’easter while making a last-ditch expedition to the dangerous area of the Atlantic known as the Flemish Cap. Clooney plays the Andrea Gail’s dedicated captain, Billy Tyne; he’s joined by a terrific supporting cast that includes Diane Lane, Mark Wahlberg, John C. Reilly, and the ever-underappreciated John Hawkes.

The film’s storm sequences – handled expertly by Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen – are visually spectacular and grippingly intense, but I think The Perfect Storm actually works best as a tribute to a particularly blue-collar brand of heroism; it’s the only summer blockbuster I’ve ever seen in which providing for one’s family and doing an honest days’ work are shown to be just as brave and courageous as, say, battling aliens or hunting for the Ark of the Covenant. Clooney’s monologue about the small joys of being a “swordboat” captain gets me all choked up every time.

A bit of explanation: I am a truly lazy, unfocused, and irresponsible human being. Or, at least, I was over the past two weeks, when I completely neglected to upload any new 'Movie Match' columns to this here blog. For the sake of completeness, however, I have included both of them below, hilariously inaccurate critical/box-office predictions intact -- keep in mind that when I wrote and published these, I had no idea that, for example, 'Meet the Browns' would end up on the dreaded IMDB Bottom 100 list, or that 'Run, Fatboy, Run' would place a miserable ninth at the box office in its opening week. Stay tuned for next week's column, when I'll predict that by the time the new Indiana Jones flick rolls around, we'll all have flying cars (electric, of course) and Lindsey Lohan will have joined a convent.

MOVIE MATCH: Long before 'Drillbit Taylor,' this little movie sparked Wilson’s career

We got spoiled last fall with those few months of rock-em-sock-em great movies coming out almost nonstop; unfortunately, we’re paying for it now during the weaksauce box office season we’re enduring at the moment.

Yes, it’s truly been a pretty cruddy month at the movies, and if not for Horton Hears a Who or maybe Tyler Perry’s upcoming Meet the Browns – his flicks seem to be getting better every time around – the pickings would be pretty slim indeed. Still, I’m going to be very cautiously optimistic about this week’s release Drillbit Taylor, if only because I’m a pretty big fan of star Owen Wilson and I really like the idea of him as a washed-up mercenary protecting freshman nerds from high school bullies. Plus, the film boasts an original story by John Hughes (yes, that John Hughes) and a screenplay by comedy it-guy Seth Rogen and former Beavis and Butt-head scribe Kristofor Brown – meaning that even if the humor is crude, it ought to at least satisfy anyone who can appreciate a good pee-pee joke.

Of course, maybe I’m just being overly positive about Drillbit since I just recently caught up with Wilson’s big-screen debut, a fantastic little indie gem that launched not only his career, but also those of his brother Luke and – maybe most importantly – co-writer/director Wes Anderson. Anderson’s Bottle Rocket, co-written by none other than Owen Wilson, was made in the mid-90s and, as IMDB.com informs me, tested as negatively in early screenings as any Columbia Pictures film up to that point. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely sold on the film when I first saw it way back when, but now I have to seriously question what those test-screening attendees missed – this flick is a riot, and a very well-made one at that.

Bottle Rocket, basically, has a setup similar to a few billion other post-Pulp Fiction 90s comedies; the difference here is that, while many other filmmakers were content to simply rip off Tarantino’s hard-to-duplicate combination of witty repartee and splattery violence, Anderson instead toned down the ugliness and upped the sentimentality, creating maybe the most heartfelt and charming movie about armed robbery ever made.

The story is about three aimless young men from Middle America who ill-fatedly attempt to start a life of crime – there’s Anthony (Luke Wilson), a former preppie college boy who suffered a nervous breakdown and just got out of a mental hospital; his knockabout buddy Dignan (Owen Wilson), who fancies himself the brains of the operation but has a lot more enthusiasm than he does actual brains; and Bob (Robert Musgrave), a meek rich kid who’s recruited to be the gang’s getaway driver because he’s the only one they know that owns a car. Their plan, which Dignan has mapped out in comically meticulous detail, is to practice on a few low-level heists in order to catch the attention of Mr. Henry (James Caan) who runs both a landscaping business and, so Dignan is convinced, a first-class heist crew.

The film moves at a pretty leisurely pace – a lot of it takes place at a rural motel where Anthony, Dignan, and Bob hide out after knocking off a bookstore – and, like Anderson’s later films, is filled with quirky little details (Bob’s last name, for example), moments of unexpected sweetness, and the kind of hilariously dysfunctional relationships that he’s still exploring in films like last year’s underrated Darjeeling Limited. That said, the filmmaking isn’t nearly as accomplished as his later work, but the seeds of greatness are definitely there; the camerawork is often inventive, the use of jangly guitar-pop on the soundtrack is perfect, and the “big robbery” finale is a hoot.

What really makes Bottle Rocket special, however, is the cast, and that’s all the more impressive since the Wilsons and Musgrave hadn’t done any film acting before – aside from the Anderson student short this film is based on. Owen is particularly impressive, fleshing out a particularly well-developed character; Dignan remains lovable even as we pity his almost infinite stupidity, and Wilson nails the dog-chasing-his-tail qualities that make him tick. Caan is also a lot of fun as a balding suburban mobster (this guy sure ain’t no Sonny Corleone), as are Lumi Cavazos, as Anthony’s non-English-speaking love interest, and future Anderson mainstay Kumar Pallana as a safecracker who looks as if he’d have trouble cracking open a soda can.

The film’s got a lot of depth for something so breezy, and also might be the most accessible thing Anderson has done to date. It’s definitely worth seeing again especially if you enjoy Wilson, or if you’re trying to remember why you used to.


MOVIE MATCH: Miss ‘The State’? Then you’ll love ‘The Ten’

Chances are, if you grew up during the 90s and watched MTV for more than just the Salt ‘N Pepa videos, you at some point caught the network’s unfortunately short-lived sketch comedy series The State.

The show was a cult favorite at best, but it offered plenty to satisfy its alternative comedy-craving fanbase – from its memorably subversive and side-splitting sketches (like "Eating Muppets" or "The Jew, the Italian, and the Red-Headed Gay") to the one semi-famous catchphrase – “I wanna dip my balls in it!” – that still, sadly, makes me laugh to this day.

The good news about The State’s long-ago demise is that the show’s alumni have gone on to some pretty impressive comedic careers. Take castmember Thomas Lennon, for instance, who splits his time between writing mega-successful Hollywood comedies like The Pacifier and Night at the Museum and appearing as Lt. Jim Dangle in the ongoing, very funny Comedy Central series Reno 911! (which co-stars his fellow Staties Kerri Kenney-Silver and Robert Ben Garant).

And then, of course, there’s Michael Ian Black, probably The State’s most recognizable graduate thanks to his ubiquitous presence on VH1’s I Love the 80s, I Love the 70s, and I Love the 90s series as well as his many commercial gigs. Like Lennon, Black has also embarked on a screenwriting career, which brings us to this week’s release Run Fatboy Run – a Black-penned tale of romance, rejection, and, um, running directed by David Schwimmer and starring Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg (who co-wrote with Black). The film looks funny, and maybe even sweet, but definitely pretty mainstream considering where Black came from – and if you’re an old-school State fan like me, it’s probably not exactly what you’d hope for one of that show’s kookiest cast members to come up with.

Don’t worry, though, because I do still have a movie for you. The Ten, released last year, is probably the closest thing to an actual State movie we’ll ever see; it’s a sketch-comedy anthology film featuring ten interlinked vignettes, each of which takes on one of the Ten Commandments. Writer/director David Wain is yet another veteran of the show – he’s also the guy behind the cult-fave summer camp comedy Wet Hot American Summer – and the film’s cast is split between State alums (Black, Kenney-Silver, and Ken Marino, for starters) and surprisingly big-name actors like Live Schrieber, Gretchen Mol, Wynona Ryder, and Adam Brody.

Like just about all sketch-comedy movies, The Ten is hit-and-miss, but the comedy is pretty bizarre and clever throughout, even when it’s not laugh-out-loud funny. Skits include a foreign-film parody about an American librarian (Mol) who has a very unusual sexual and spiritual awakening while vacationing in Mexico; a rather creepy tale about a newlywed (Winona Ryder) who falls head over heels for a ventriloquist’s dummy; a “false idol” story about a skydiving accident survivor (Brody) who becomes a national celebrity; and even a raunchy animated segment about an untrustworthy rhino and some deviant wiener dogs. The segments are linked by a framing story in which Paul Rudd introduces all the various commandments, though he gets increasingly tripped up by falling in and out of love with Famke Janssen and Jessica Alba (Moses never had it so tough).

As is probably obvious, Wain’s sense of humor hasn’t really changed much since his television days, and while The Ten isn’t too over-the-top in its outrageousness, the freedom of the R rating gives him the chance to get away with some things that even MTV would have balked at (i.e. the dummy sex scene). It’s a lot of fun seeing performers like Ryder and Schreiber let their guard down to embrace the film’s State-style absurdity, and there are at least three or four sketches on display here that rank with the show’s best material – the final one, involving the commandment about keeping the Sabbath day holy, is an absolute riot.

If nothing else, The Ten ought to tide State fans over until MTV finally releases the full-series DVD set they’ve been promising for years. It was a comedy series that, like its contemporaries Mr. Show and The Ben Stiller Show, never got the appreciation it deserved, but did at least launch the careers of some very funny people – and I, for one, am happy to see them working to keep the show’s spirit alive.