Let’s be honest. The Ten Commandments are not really as important today as they used to be. In the modern world, how many of us are not guilty of coveting our neighbor’s goods? Murder and stealing will always be wrong, but “Thou shalt not bear false witness?” How many of us have not lied to a friend on a Friday night and said that they look great, when they really look like a swamp creature.

This is exactly what The Ten does. It shows us the lighter side of the Ten Commandments. Each Commandment is featured in a vignette hosted by Paul Rudd and staring comedians Adam Brody, Rob Corddry and Michael Ian Black. Each one shows an absurd situation in which the main characters deal with the Commandment.

The problem is that the film is complete garbage.

Oddly, each spoof is a parody of a different genre including: Sitcoms, French new-wave, crime drama, musical and even Ralph Bakshi-esque disturbing cartoons, but they are never able to overcome feeling like bad parody. The entire film is trying way too hard for each laugh by the audience.

Too many of the vignettes feel like TV episodes edited to fit the film. The audience is never given enough time to adjust to each sudden style change, which makes the film confusing instead of comical.

The comedy is lowbrow, ridiculous and sometimes even cringe-inducing. The gag that a doctor left a pair of scissors inside a patient as a joke is more tragic than funny, and the entire attempt at comedy falls flat on its face.

The actors are all amazing, but their parts are hackneyed and obvious. Is a sitcom about an immovable, male torso really funny? Director David Wain makes it so obvious that this is a commentary of contemporary celebrity that it is boring. Subtlety often leads to genius, and unfortunately that is a film commandment that The Ten as not learned.

It is impossible to recommend this film to anyone. Some of the comedy is too smart for the stupid, and much of it is too stupid for the smart. Religious people will be angry at the film’s flippancy towards gospel, and the non-religious will want to run for the door during the final, lovey-dovey musical number or the naked one that precedes it.

The Ten might have made a mediocre ten-episode TV series, but it makes a horrible film. It is hard to sit through despite its 93-minute running time, and it is impossible to stress how hard the film is to enjoy. Good comedy often means accepting outrageous things, but Jesus Christ as a sales rep for a prosthetics firm is hard to believe.