Has been for some time now. While there are glimmers of good comedy out there, The Daily Show, Lewis Black individually, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, My Name is Earl, The Simpsons, to name a few, the vast majority of what’s out there to laugh at is simply not all that funny. I’m sorry to say it too; we used to be such a hilarious country. But when Dane Cook, who is not bad, just not all that great, is the big draw in the standup world, Austin Powers is considered classic, and CBS is your funniest network, then you know the funny business has problems.

Still, there are gems here and there. There are the ones mentioned above, plus a few others. But the good funnies are just so damn hard to find. Seriously, the last time I laughed so hard I turned red was almost five years ago, when I first witnessed “The great South Park Cripple Fight”. Truly a classic moment; it was actually so great I could not laugh- I just stared at the TV dumbfounded for about twenty minutes, then passed out. It really shouldn’t take five years for the next moment like that to come. But still, I look, and I search, unfortunately coming up mostly empty.

I went to see The Ten hoping to find another one of those little nuggets of great comedy. The film has the right pedigree at least. David Wain directed and co-wrote this one, and he did a pretty good job with Wet Hot American Summer. So there’s always a chance.

Like the title suggests, the film is a collection of stories loosely centered around the Ten Commandments. So basically, it’s a movie of sketch comedy shorts. Okay, I love good sketch comedy. Although I have the unfortunate habit comparing any of it I’ve seen to Monty Python, which is honestly not all that fair- it’s like comparing a little leaguer to Ted Williams. But I know I do that, so I can counteract it a little, and do my best to give anything a fair shot.

He has a pretty heavy hitting cast of comedians all throughout the movie, with a few folks from Wet Hot American Summer here and there, as well as drawing old buddies from The State, Reno 911, and Stella- although now that I think of it, aren’t a great deal of the cast of Stella and Reno 911 from The State to begin with? Wet Hot as well? It’s been so long since I’ve seen that show. The comedy world can get really incestuous, can’t it?

Anyhoo, along with all of them there is some nice work from more standard actors doing comedic turns, which is nice to see. Liev Schreiber, Winona Ryder, Oliver Platt, Bobby Cannavale, Gretchen Moll, Famke Jansen, even Jessica Alba has a bit and doesn’t do too badly. I always like it when mostly dramatic actors do a real comedy role, not just some lame romantic comedy thing, which usually is neither romantic or comedic. It shows an ability or at least a willingness to branch out a bit, and try something different. And I’d say they all did pretty good with it here.

Unfortunately, I really can’t say more positive things about this film. I mean, it has its moments, and you can’t really fault anyone’s performance, but the stories dragged past the point of funny and into the realm of kicking a dead horse; which is strange to say, considering none of the stories last longer than ten minutes. It's probably because a great deal of the humor in each sketch is all wrapped up in the premise of the sketch itself. And once that was done being laughed at, redundancy starts. And there’s only so much redundancy can be funny, especially if it’s over and over in each separate skit and the redundancy itself isn’t part of the gag.

Even without the redundancy issue, the stories themselves seemed pretty soft. Never mind that they weren’t really saying anything about the Ten Commandments at all, just using them as a weak link between the stories. The comedy within the stories was pretty thin. A lot of it was of the family home video variety I thought, as in it’s only funny because you know the people. An example: Have you ever sat with a friend and their family as they watched footage of some cookout from years ago, saw how they all laugh their asses off at Uncle Tony’s drunken antics, while you sit there desperately trying to see the joke? Not really funny for you if you’ve never met uncle Tony, is it?

That’s what a lot of the humor in this one was like. I mean, you take any other actress out there that nobody’s ever seen, have her hump a ventriloquist dummy, is it really funny? Or is it just funny because its Winona Ryder doing it? Fine, I don’t personally know Winona Ryder and neither do you, but the concept is the same. She did an admirable job riding the piece of wood, but its really mostly because its her doing it rather than the moment itself has humor in it that made it funny at all.

So yeah, this one comes nowhere close to the unfair Monty Python standard. Nor to the Kids in the Hall standard either. It has it moments, and there will be things in you will laugh at, but really, not enough of them, and not for more than a single viewing. After that I think it’d just feel kinda lame.

So unfortunately this isn’t a found nugget of good American comedy. Oh well, they tried, they just missed. I’ll keep looking for more good comedy. Till I find it, at least I still have the ‘127th Upperclass Twit of the Year Contest.'