The Ten is a series of comedy sketches based on the Ten Commandments, loosely based. With several members of The State involved, it's mostly absurdist humor and a few musical numbers. While some skits hit and others at least have good premises, most didn't work for me and I was waiting for the end.
The first skit, "Thou Shalt Worship No God Before Me" is about a guy who sky dives without a parachute, survives, but is trapped partially underground. If he's moved he'll die. The story is really about celebrity as he gets a TV series, becomes famous, his fiance (Winona Ryder) leaves him, etc. It really wasn't funny.
Fortunately the best skit was next. In "Thou Shalt not Take the Lord's Name in Vain" a virgin librarian (Gretchen Mol) travels to Mexico and has an affair with Jesus (Justin Theroux) who's hanging out as a carpenter before getting around to the business of the rapture. Their first love story plays out well with nice parallels to finding religion and some good sight gags thrown in. They also have a lot of fun with the language. It's unfortunate that the next 8 episodes didn't reach this level.
"Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's House" has an interesting absurd premise where Liev Schreiber and his neighbor try to top each other by collecting more CAT Scan machines. But it doesn't go anywhere.
Some characters reappear in later sketches. Winona Ryder falls for a ventriloquist's dummy and it's amusing, but my biggest laugh was noticing she was wearing two watches. A doctor in one skit leaves surgical instruments in a patient "as a goof" and is convicted of murder. In a later skit in prison Rob Corddry covets him as his own prison "bitch". The conversations about anal rape against his will are very very very wrong. If you can get past that it could be funny, but I'm not sure I was able to.
Paul Rudd introduces each skit via interstials with a running story of him cheating on his wife (Framke Janseen) with Jessica Alba. For the most part I don't think any of those worked either.
Most reviews call it a hit or miss kind of film and I agree that most of them are misses.
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