JUST when you thought it was safe to go back to the movies, here comes another mob comedy.But it turns out that “The Whole Nine Yards” is an offer you shouldn’t refuse: It’s laugh-out-loud, side-splitting funny.
The setup is pure sitcom. Veteran hit man Jimmy “The Tulip” Tudeski (Bruce Willis) has a falling out with his longtime employer, the Gogolak crime family of Chicago, whose leader he’s ratted out to the authorities.
So he moves to Montreal, where, in the proud tradition of “Analyze This,” “Mickey Blue Eyes” and other lesser comedies, he complicates the life of an innocent civilian — in this case, milquetoast dentist Nicholas “Oz” Oseransky (Matthew Perry).
I won’t give away the plot’s many twists, except to say that all of the film’s characters save Oz — including his nasty French-Canadian wife, Sophie (Rosanna Arquette), and his receptionist, Jill (Amanda Peet) — set out to kill somebody.
The screenplay — attributed to newcomer Mitchell Kapner — is more than a little mechanical, but director Jonathan Lynn, in his funniest film since “My Cousin Vinny,” keeps things perking along.
Lynn is abetted considerably by his terrific cast, especially Perry in what’s by far his most effective big-screen outing.
Showing the easy physical grace of the young Cary Grant, the “Friends” star is hilarious as the very nervous Oz, smashing into glass doors, falling down stairs and executing other pratfalls with consummate skill.
Willis, who was once one of Hollywood’s most notorious scene stealers, has evolved into a most generous and subtle performer.
He’s winningly light-handed as the killer, who solemnly explains to the horrified Oz that “it’s not important that I’ve killed 17 people — what’s important is how I get along with the people who are still alive.”
Peet, of WB’s “Jack and Jill,” is a scream as Oz’s receptionist, who eagerly volunteers as Jimmy’s apprentice, easily overshadowing the beautiful Natasha Henstridge (“Species”) as Jimmy’s estranged wife — with whom Oz falls in love with at great personal peril.
Only Arquette fails to deliver. Sporting a horrific French accent and aging-sexpot duds, she seems to be acting in another movie, if not on another planet.
Michael Clarke Duncan (the Oscar-nominated gentle giant of “The Green Mile”) is amusing as a cheerful hit man, while comic Kevin Pollak is underused as the apoplectic acting head of the Gogolak family, who has problems pronouncing his Vs and Ws.
“The Whole Nine Yards” is a perfect antidote to the midwinter blues.
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THE WHOLE NINE YARDS
There are loads of laughs in this formula mob farce about a contract killer (Bruce Willis) who pulls his mild-mannered dentist neighbor (Matthew Perry) into a series of murder plots. Willis and Amanda Peet are funny, but it’s Perry’s inspired pratfalls that make the movie. Running time: 101 minutes. Rated R. At the 42nd Street E-Walk, the Lincoln Square, the Union Square, others.