Q: On a scale of one to 11, what would I give David Wain's "The Ten"?

A: It's a 10.

Honest to Bo Derek. The Ten is really, really good. Like, one-of - the-funniest-comedies-I've-ever-seen good. Not to set your expectations too high or anything — but oh God, so very funny.

Keeping in the spirit of the film — which is split into ten stories, each loosely (very loosely) based around one of the ten commandments — here are TEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE TEN:

1. In case you missed it the first time, here's the teaser trailer:



2. Going in, I had high expectations — being a big fan of The State, Stella and David Wain's comic sensibilities in general — but I also sort of expected The Ten not to meet those expectations. If that makes any sense.

I have a history of underrating comedies the first time I see them. I think it's because, as a whiny former drama major, I tend to get distracted when a film's plot is just an excuse to string together jokes (as regular T.A.M.S.Y. readers know, I also get distracted when a film's plot is an excuse to string together anything, e.g., Spartan war victories), even if the jokes are very funny.

The most relevant example of this is Wet Hot American Summer, David Wain's first film, which I saw alone in a nearly empty theater in Times Square, very shortly after its release, and which I found intermittently funny but also to be, uh, kind of just a dumb sketch about '80s summer-camp movies stretched over 97 minutes. I never, ever would've expected Wet Hot to attain the cult status it has, especially among people too young to have watched The State during its original run on MTV.

Upon subsequent viewings, I like Wet Hot much more (I'd give it an 8 out of 11), but still not quite as much as other people do. It's got very funny jokes, yes. But it is also unapologetically dumb, and unapologetically a sketch stretched over 97 minutes.

3. The Ten is better and funnier than Wet Hot. Yeah, I went there.

4. Part of what makes The Ten better than Wet Hot is that, instead of being one bizarre sketch stretched into a full-length film, it's ten bizarre sketches stretched into a full-length film. The ten stories intertwine with one another in direct and indirect ways (sometimes as continuations of previous stories, sometimes just to allow for running jokes, a Wain/State specialty), but each is its own full story. So even if one sketch falls flat for you, it won't overstay its welcome.

But the other thing that makes The Ten so great is that, as far as I'm concerned, none of the sketches fall flat. Each story is based in a absurd, convoluted, State-worthy premise (the film is cowritten by Wain and Ken Marino), but nothing bombs.

5. So much of the hilarity is based in those absurd, convoluted premises that I'm hesitant to explain anything in detail. Suffice to say, it's a David Wain movie, so there are the obligatory references to erections, vaginas, titty fucking, prison rape and lite rock of the 1970s. And naturally, lots of good one-liners and running jokes. The Wet Hot fan base won't be disappointed.

If you want minor spoilers beyond that, you can read this positive review at the blog Not Coming to a Theater Near You, or the IFC Blog's thumbs down.

I do want to say this much: One of the sketches that the IFC Blog specifically says "doesn't work," and calls "odd-for-odd's sake" is one of the bits I found most hilarious: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods," which features Liev Schrieber and Joe Lo Truglio as neighbors whose efforts to one up one another result in a battle to see who can order the most CAT scan machines.

6. Not only is it a successful comedy, but The Ten is surprisingly viable as an art film (or at least a parody of an art film), too. The stories incorporate a surprising thematic range at times, including a Bertolucci-esque tale of Gretchen Mol's sexual awakening in Mexico, and an animated story about a deceitful rhinoceros' fall from grace (featuring the work of Aaron Augenblick, best known for Wonder Showzen, and the voice talent of Jon Benjamin).

7. The glue that holds The Ten together is Paul Rudd, as Master of Ceremonies "Jeff," who attempts to introduce each story (his crumbling marriage to Famke Janssen keeps getting in the way).

I found these tiny vignettes to be the least funny bits in the film, and the only thing about The Ten that could be called even remotely predictable. But even they didn't suck.

8. When I was the aforementioned whiny drama major, one of my professors taught me a good rule of thumb (she was talking about theater, but I think it applies to film, too): If the actors are generally good, the director was good. If the actors are generally bad, the director was bad.

By that rule alone, The Ten establishes Wain as an excellent comic director. There are a lot of famous people in the cast (and not only people known for comedy, as in Wet Hot), and the fact that all of them are able to mesh in so smoothly with the State veterans, in a series of quintessentially Stately bits, says a lot about Wain's talents. Because the movie does get extremely bizarre, and never do the actors seem anything less than comfortable and wholly committed.

Particularly funny, I thought, were Schreiber, Oliver Platt (as a second-rate stand-up comedian impersonating Arnold Schwazenegger) and Gretchen Mol. Speaking of which,

8 1/2: Gretchen Mol is just insanely hot. I know that, over the past decade, it's been said a million times that such-and-such film was going to make Gretchen Mol extremely famous, and it's proven false every time, but The Ten is going to make Gretchen Mol extremely famous!

Winona Ryder is also pretty funny/hot. But she plays a girl who sleeps around a lot, so it wasn't exactly a stretch or anything. (Wait, I just realized that casting Ryder as a girl who sleeps around a lot — and in the story "Thou shalt not steal," no less — is actually a very funny joke in itself. I'm sort of dense.)

9. I saw The Ten at the Cleveland International Film Festival's midnight screening Saturday night/Sunday morning. I arrived just as the lights were going down, and as I entered the packed theater, someone in the crowd loudly mock-whispered "The whole front row is open!" in a tone oddly reminiscent of David Wain himself. Except I didn't think Wain was actually there.

Turned out, he was. After the credits finished rolling (and stick around for the credits, by the way — the theme songs are hilarious), a CIFF spokesdude introduced Wain, who gamely answered a series of inane questions ("What was it like to work with all those actors?", "Is there going to be a second season of Stella?", etc.).

Nothing substantive came of the Q&A session. I just wanted to note that David Wain instructed me on where to sit for a screening of a David Wain movie, which is like my proudest achievement ever.

One other thing about the screening: The film appears to have been really lushly shot (by a little-known cinematographer, Yaron Orbach), especially for a comedy, which is another reason I think it's legitimately successful as an art film. But it was hard to appreciate the look of the film fully — because, for reasons unknown to me (and, apparently, Wain), the CIFF didn't show an actual print of it. They had a videotape. And if you want to know what a videotape looks like on a big movie screen when you're sitting way up front, the answer is: Really, really shitty.

10. My brother just told me about this video, and it is adorably hilarious. In which a nine-year-old David Wain provides a tour of his hometown, Shaker Heights, Ohio.



Wow, this post is really long. Sorry.

10 1/2: I forced my parents to go see the screening yesterday afternoon, and they also really, really liked it. This makes me even more convinced that The Ten is going to be as wildly successful as it deserves to be.

POSTSCRIPT/10 & THREE QUARTERS: I forgot to mention that The Ten doesn't hit theaters until August 3rd. Sorry, sucka.