At last, someone has created a device to thrash the ugly off Julia Roberts!

Snow Shite and the Repression Dwarfs.

Snow White with a unibrow!

A retelling of Snow White from the wicked queen’s point of view. Which means MIRROR MIRROR makes as much sense as every other point of view – none.

Unnecessary special effects (that are not that special when overused to this extent), intentionally juvenile performances and irritating editing make this colorful, campy adventure as teeth-grating as biting into a poisoned apple. Writers Marc Klein, Jason Keller and Melisa Wallack, and director Tarsem Singh, have worked hard on constructing a new-ish story, with good foreshadowing, plot points and payoffs. But trying to make the exercise more tolerable by having every actor adopt a modern comedic vernacular works about as well as claiming the Queen is supposed to be beautiful and then casting Julia Roberts in the role.

The Queen gains control of the kingdom via dark magic, her king riding off to battle some ambiguous “evil” and never returning. Her stepdaughter Snow White (Lily Collins, who must unfortunately share a dressing room with her unibrow), is apparently an annoying 18-year-old with nothing to do about the palace except get underfoot.

Queen Roberts cannot put her finger on why Snow annoys her so: “After all, you’ve done nothing to me. Caused no problems. And yet… there is something about you that’s so incredibly… irritating. I don’t know what it is. The slumped shoulders, the hair, that voice. Mmm…” Ditto to Julia Roberts. I would ask her whether she’s looked in the mirror lately, but I know the answer to that one.

Aptly named sexyboy Armie Hammer is rich Prince Alcott, whom both Snow and Queen would like to bite into, Queen because the kingdom is broke and needs a bailout by marrying into money, and Snow because she’s a virgin succumbing to the hormones cascading through her vagina. Don’t worry parents, the movie is aimed at kids, so doesn’t use any bad words like “bailout.”

Please, Ms. White, free the caterpillar and let it live unmolested on a leaf somewhere!

It seems like a naked chest and a pretty face on a man affect women as curiously as a naked chest and a pretty face on a woman affects men, if the brain-loosening reactions of Queen and Snow are any indication every time Armie Hammer walks around with his shirt off. Of all the principals (including Nathan Lane as Queen’s liege Brighton, Mare Winningham as the Baker and a cameo by Sean Bean as King), Hammer is the only person to really pull off his cheesy performance, never better illustrated as when he decides to pursue some bandits, striding out of the room with jaw squared, proclaiming, “Justice must prevail!”

We meet the dwarfs (led by little people Jordan Prentice, Joe Gnoffo and Danny Woodburn) as they plunder travelers in the forest, which they do while wearing masks and using covered stilts to look like giants. (Strangely enough, when they’re on stilts, their arms are regular length, making them look like the stuntmen on stilts that they really are…oops!…)

Queen’s vaunted magic mirror doesn’t have much bearing on this story, except to warn Queen that using magic has its price; that price, I presume, has something to do with being in a movie almost unwatchable.

When Snow expresses interest in Prince, Queen orders Brighton to kill her in the forest. Which he doesn’t. Abandoned Snow meets the Dwarfs and a training montage ensues, making her a warrior in five minutes. Now she’s ready to save the kingdom at the 80-minute mark, leaving enough time to tie up loose ends with peripheral characters and still make it under the 100-minute mark so that the studio can profit from maximum amount of screenings.

One of the dwarfs, Half Pint (Mark Povinelli), is infatuated with Snow. But every time he lets his heart show, “I need you– I mean, ‘we’ need you,” it’s a big gag. Because it’s just too outlandish for a dwarf to harbor real feelings for a full-sized woman, right? Especially when everyone – audience and characters alike – takes it for granted she’s going to back dat ass up on the naked chest with the pretty face. The storytellers keep pounding Half Pint’s tragedy with numerous comments from him, but no shrift is given to the fact that his feelings might be – dare we? – true love. Snow doesn’t even look twice at him, infantilizing him as egregiously as everyone else who insults him outwardly. In THE HUNGER GAMES, when Doofus declares his infatuation with Katniss, suddenly she’s all over him even though she had another boyfriend waiting! Not so when you’re a dwarf – I mean, his heart couldn’t possibly be overflowing with love-ache every time she walks by with that glamorous unibrow, at least, not like the love-ache in a real person’s heart. And by ‘real’ we mean normal-sized, right? Just repress it to the grave and keep your mouth shut, little man…

Sean Bean brings a regality to the last few minutes that doesn’t quite save the movie. And the story is neatly concluded with Queen being defeated on the point of an apple, and everyone cheering…

…Then Indian director Tarsem Dhandwar Singh does something crazier than any of the plot points in the film – he poisons his own apple by making the cast participate in an Indian Bollywood dance number during the outro credits, ruining whatever tone he was fitfully trying to create for the whole movie! You need to get to the level of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE before you’re allowed to make me feel this level of dirty. Don’t get me wrong, those numbers can be dynamic and exciting in the right tonal setting, but to try and slip one into Western cinema when no one is looking… well, I guess he’s got a point; no one saw this film…

END

For the Love of Prostitution.

Julia Roberts is a classless whore who gets lucky by bedding a millionaire. And in PRETTY WOMAN, Julia Roberts is a classless whore who gets lucky by bedding a millionaire.

In what may be the most ignorant movie in a decade, a businessman hires a Hollywood Boulevard hooker (renowned for their trashiness, tastelessness, uncleanliness, tardiness and, most notably, their small dicks) who falls in love with him.

Does it occur to anyone how EASY PEASY LEMON SQUEEZY it is to “fall in love” with a billionaire who keeps buying you things? A lapdog suffers the same condition.

Richard Gere is the noncommittal Edward, a businessman whose job involves “screwing people for money,” so finds affinity with prostitute Vivian (Roberts) who does it literally.

But I still don’t get the title: PRETTY WOMAN. Maybe I missed the memo, but are they referring to…? No! They don’t mean Julia Roberts???– Bwohahahaha!– excuse the milk shooting outta my nose, but is that meant to be ironic, like “Have A Nice Day,” or just an outright lie, like “Based On True Events” or “to protect and serve”? Funniest part about the title is that to make Roberts look nominally “pretty,” they had to cast someone EVEN UGLIER as her roommate – enter bushy-browed Laura San Giacomo.

Hector Elizondo has a most sympathetic role, as the hotel concierge who knows his high class regular guest Edward is hiring this classless whore and turns a blind eye to the transaction; he doesn’t judge Vivian’s naïveté or upbringing, but helps turn her from a low class slag into a high class escort.

But does it cross people’s minds that Hector turns a blind eye because of the money that Edward throws at his hotel regularly?

Does it cross people’s minds that maybe Vivian is turning into a cultured debutante BECAUSE it is a rich, beautiful man footing the bill? What if her date was a scrounging, fat, ugly Jason Alexander, who still loved her as much? Alexander, by the way, happens to play Edward’s attorney here. Though he’s rich, he is as unsavory as, well, Jason Alexander, so when he propositions Vivian (while she is living the fantasy lie that she is Edward’s wifey) she stupidly turns him down. Let me clarify to viewers who are also living a fantasy lie, pretending you know nothing about this nightish business: Vivian turns Alexander down NOT through any moral pangs, but because she would much rather get paid and laid by someone like Edward. She fools herself – and you – into thinking it is because she “loves” Edward that she doesn’t want to “cheat” on him – but come on! If I have to spell out everything again about the ease of “falling in love” with a billionaire, we’ll be here for days.

Now don’t get me wrong: morality, philandering, cheating, adultery, prostitution – all these words mean nothing to a nihilist like my bad self (I’m not railing against prostitution; hell, some of my best friends are prostitutes); you yourself place devious import upon these words, then disregard your own rules to root for what you consider an immoral slattern. But – registered prostitute or not – every woman behaves in exactly the same manner as Vivian when it comes to dealing with men: the less that money means to a man, the more she will throw herself at him. And by that, I don’t mean the less he HAS; I mean, the less he cares about how he spends the LARGE AMOUNT he has. Why else do the oldest, richest, most powerful guys have the youngest, dumbest, sluttiest girls on their arms?

A man who throws money at a woman as offhandedly as Edward doesn’t EARN her love or loyalty – he BUYS it. And if you’ve just considered how shallow that makes Edward, how much shallower does it make Vivian, always ready to sell to the highest bidder? It’s not Woman’s fault – it’s an evolutionary survival tactic.

And all the women in the film – and in the audience – look down their noses at the prostitutes plying their wares, or trying to work their way into high society… Honey, there but for the grace of a man’s wallet go you!

PRETTY WOMAN tries to pass itself off as a modern-day MY FAIR LADY (1964) or George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, but it is closer to the source material that both were adapted from, Ovid’s Metamorphoses X, in which sculptor Pygmalion became disinterested in women after seeing some who were reduced to prostitution, carving his own woman in ivory and falling in love with her, before she was made real by Venus.

Comparing it to Ovid doesn’t make it a commendable film. Just because it was a hit with hypocrites doesn’t mean it’s better than MANNEQUIN (1987).

Edward hired the high-maintenance Vivian for one week (which reminds us of the axiom, “You don’t pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterward”), after which he wanted to make her a Kept Woman, setting her up in an apartment and seeing to all her needs (i.e. shoes and spas). But Vivian wants more. Of course she does. As Chris Rock notes, “What do women want? – Everything!” His heart and soul as well as his wallet. But there is prioritization applied. Put it this way: if Edward just offered his heart without the money, would she take it? Would she stop hooking for him because he declared his chaste love for her – but wouldn’t spend a dime more on her? It all starts to fall into place like a game of Tetris.

Even though not spending a dime more would truly make Vivian ‘Not A Hooker’ anymore (which is what she seems to be aspiring towards), she would never in a billion years accept this condition after the luxuries she was exposed to. Would any woman? Would you?

Is the hypocrisy starting to seep into your pedestrian brains, pagans? You publicly vilify a “profession” that is usually resorted to through necessity, not choice. And if necessity, then PRETTY WOMAN is telling us that within every low class trash is a high class socialite. You seem to concur, which is why you love Vivian making shovel-mouthed smiles at Edward. Then why is prostitution still illegal? Why do you vilify HOOKERS AT THE POINT or G-STRING DIVAS? Why do you look down your nose at “exotic dancers” and escorts? Why does the media only profile low-class skanks and sadistic pimps, and report only streetwalker arrests, skewing the perception of prostitution towards dangerous, diseased trash-fest?

Edward arcs from being a heartless bitch, brutally carving up companies in hostile takeovers, to helping a company that he should be hostilely taking over. I guess this makes him a good guy, as he goes OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN in the final scene to sweep Vivian off her feet. The old adage is true: He just needed to get laid! Why don’t we buy hookers for all those crusty old CEO’s who are busy destroying the country with their cruel greed? – their heart is as close as a handjob.

But look again at your hypocrisy in rooting for this evil-hearted man who doesn’t produce anything, doesn’t create anything, has no tangible or useful product to offer – he didn’t NEED to smash that last client to secure his future, he’s already a billionaire. You know what would purify him properly?

If I was a pretty woman being courted by a man like Edward, it would impress me more if he gave away ALL of the money he made destroying other businesses. THAT would make him a “good” person…

But then I wouldn’t want to be with the broke bastard because he couldn’t buy me a yacht to go with my shoes and expensive lingerie…

END

Owned By His Own War.

Before George H.W. Bush sold weapons to Saddam, before Ronald Reagan sold weapons to Iran, before George W. Bush lost 190,000 guns in Iraq – there was Tom Hanks, selling weapons to the Mujahedeen.

A splinter group of the Mujahedeen would later become the Taliban.

Thanks again, American Politicians.

In the Mike Nichols-directed political intriguer, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR, America’s golden boy, Hanks, is early-80s Texas Democratic congressman, Charlie Wilson, quite a down-to-earth, uninhibited roarer, rogerer and cad (from this movie’s account); not afraid to whore around in public, do drugs at socialite parties and admit to unethical practices. Makes us wonder how such a fun guy was elected in the first place.

The real life Charlie Wilson was honored with this movie because he was in a position to help the CIA fund Afghan troops against Soviet invaders, thereby altering a major stream of history. Suffice to say, the movie paints him as noble, basing its stance on one trip he makes to an Afghan refugee camp to visit kids with their limbs blown off, thereby strengthening his resolve to appropriate funds and drive out dem debbil Russkies.

Chameleon Philip Seymour Hoffman plays disheveled, loose-cannon CIA operative, Gust Avrakotos, whose banter with Wilson is one of the features of this sometimes-tedious exercise. He is Wilson’s enabler and smarmy conscience. When Wilson exhibits doubt about the ethics and effectiveness of their planning, Gust consoles him with a Zen fable:

“A little boy on his 14th birthday gets a horse, and everybody in the village says, ‘How wonderful!’ And the Zen master says, ‘We’ll see.’ Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, ‘How terrible!’ And the Zen master says, ‘We’ll see.’ Then a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight – except the boy can’t ’cause his leg’s all messed up. And everybody says, ‘How wonderful!'” Charlie Wilson pipes in, “Now the Zen master says, ‘We’ll see.'”

Poffy The Cucumber’s War

Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), a high society harlot who occasionally bumped uglies with Wilson, squirms her way into the history books by being the one who convinced him to visit the camp. She is portrayed as a big influence on Wilson, even though she was just another pretty ass hanging off his cocaine-addled coattails, with a decidedly Marie Antoinette mind-set (i.e. out of touch with the common rabble): “People think it’s Joanne the social queen. That’s not me at all. I get bored to death when people talk about nothing.” Looked in the mirror lately, honey?

Gust and Wilson realized that their biggest problem with America supplying weapons to Afghanistan was that if Afghans were captured by the Soviets with weapons that were identified as coming from America, then the Cold War would become an actual war. So they had to supply weapons that looked like they could have been captured from the Soviets. Lucky Wilson was a politician – only a politician could be this duplicitous.

Charlie Wilson’s grand half-plan eventually unraveled due to the same political apathy that informs today’s inept government machinations – after he supplied the weapons to DESTROY Soviet intrusion, Congress funding disappeared before he could REBUILD; infrastructure, medical supplies, troop necessities were all swept under a Middle Eastern flying carpet.

The newsworthy elements were all taken care of (helicopters exploding, commerce continuing, funds disbursed, jubilant crowds in the streets) – who cares what happened next? I’m not gonna bite into the political paradoxes of Wilson’s deeds. We are not told WHY anyone would go so far overseas to support a war that isn’t theirs. What is the political/financial benefit to America? (It’s way too exhausting explaining the misdeeds of amoral politicians to an insensate public. In 2008, Alaskan senator Ted Stevens almost won back his senate seat, even after being convicted of 7 felony counts. How’s that for Low Information Voting?) Still, there is no animosity towards the American government in this movie – their neglect to finish the Afghanistan conflict is an unfortunate bureaucratic miscalculation, instead of the endemic problem it has always been. Again, the snide Amurrican gubmint never figured that decades later, their underhanded, unfinished, swinish alliances and misappropriations would be uncovered.

It makes me wonder: if supplying weapons to the Afghans was justified because one man from America was seemingly morally affected by the misery he saw and wanted to help repel the invading force (the Soviets), who’s to stop one man from another country visiting Afghanistan today (2008) and being saddened by the misery caused by the invading forces (this time, the Americans, under the pretense of fighting al Qaeda), and then funding the Afghans to repel the American invaders?

From this movie’s standpoint, Wilson is the hero – he’s Tom Hanks, he’s getting an award for being such a rogerer or something, and no one cares what the Mujahedeen descendants will do on that far-off date of September 11, 2001.

The war and its ramifications continued long after Charlie Wilson stopped finger-poking his two cents’ worth. So it only seems to be “his” war only during his involvement. He may have felt he “lost” his battle with Congress, but considering no one knows his name outside of this favorable movie, I’d say Charlie Wilson came out on top in the end.

Wilson poked his snowed nose into a melee already in progress and was “honored” with a movie terming it HIS war. Whatever will they say about that coward idiot-child president who started a war of choice with Iraq with no exit strategy?

We’ll see.

END

“1 Louder” Than Ocean’s Eleven.

Sesame Street is having an aneurysm over this movie’s slogan: “Twelve is the new Eleven.”

Poffy Pitt: Cool as a – Cucumber!

Having nailed the formula down pat with OCEAN’S ELEVEN – ridiculously implausible action and pulp coincidences, snide and smarmy rock soundtrack (evoking a Guy Ritchie élan), smash-cuts and wobbling steadicams, overlapping, smartass dialogue, and A-List megastars glutting all 70 millimeters of the widescreen – director Steven Soderbergh now hurls OCEAN’S TWELVE at us like an elitist upper-class Molotov cocktail and hopes we don’t run screaming into the sallow beigeness of our mundane, everyday lives.

Filled as it is with man-toys (from George Clooney‘s too-hip instigator, Danny Ocean, to Matt Damon‘s stuttering novice, Linus, to Brad Pitt‘s glib Tyler Durden franchise, here named Rusty Ryan) and toy women (the stunningly rapturous Catherine Zeta-Jones as Rusty’s ex-sex, Detective Isabel, and the stunningly bland Julia Roberts playing Tess, Ocean’s spouse), we find the camera righteously slewing all over creation trying to cram them all in, making for a movie so self-aware of its megastar cheese-wattage that it can’t quite get over its own smugness.

There is something intrinsically twisted in a society bulked with middle- and lower-class peons, who would patronize a film centering on the illegal exploits of upper-class thieves, tolerating the hijinks of these outlandishly enabled hedonists for the very fact that they are too rich to be stealing for necessity in the first place.

It’s good to be a man-toy.

The megastars quickly exposit why they should all go to Europe for this film (besides to annoy those of us trying to EARN a living): the casino entrepreneur whom they heisted in OCEAN’S ELEVEN, Benedict (Andy Garcia, foreboding as always), has located them all and craves payback – with big vig – so off they traipse to heist Continental rich men for the funds. ROBIN AND THE SEVEN HOODS this ain’t – the rich robbing the rich to pay the rich. See, lower-class peons, how it all works out for everyone?

Thus does malarkey ensue. When their first Euro heist requires a cable shot that cannot be made from one building to another due to the second building being too low, instead of chipping away at the ramparts of the first building, or taking a shot from a lower window, these monumentally-thick thieves opt to raise the second building 18 inches (via underwater pylon-jacks) to achieve their goal. If you sat in your seat without batting an eye during this incomprehensibly-gratuitous sequence (which would have realistically put Ocean’s crew so far into the red financially that they’d be selling their suave man-behinds in Amsterdam just to pay for the plane tickets home), the rest of the plot would make complete sense.

If, on the other hand, you are not in the 1-percent of super-thieves currently trawling the French Riviera billionaire circuit, or if you have not the faintest clue where to purchase building-raising pylons with digital leveling readouts, the plot will become one sad contrivance after the next, magically twisting in on itself whenever it wants to pull another double-con on its audience.

In touch with reality about as solidly as Michael Jackson, the movie’s prime directive is eventually established – a thievery competition between Ocean’s Eleven and acclaimed Euro thief, the Night Fox (Vincent Cassel, suitably Continentally Charming-yet-Treacherous).

The competition’s Prize is housed in a museum room rife with laser fields – which begs the question: when is a security company going to produce a laser field that actually encloses the object it is guarding? From ENTRAPMENT (where Zeta-Jones herself breaches a laser field), to JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK, laser fields only exist in movies to illustrate how pragmatically they can be breached, and are as much a hindrance to super-thieves as geriatric rent-a-guards.

With a climactic soundtrack lifted from Iron Butterfly’s In A Gadda Da Vida, the grand double-triple-con goes into effect – with Julia Roberts suddenly playing Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis suddenly turning up and playing Bruce Willis, and everyone else getting arrested and clanked into a cell, isolated from any real perps lest their luscious posteriors suffer the brunt of caged man-lust.

Ultimately, Ocean and the Night Fox face off to explain to the addled audience (replete with crash-cut visuals) the obvious discrepancies and plot holes that we want to slap the screenwriters over. After the Night Fox gets his Bond-Villain on, revealing his methods in heisting the Prize – including a scene of break-dancing through that vaunted laser field – Ocean accounts what really transpired during the heist. Suddenly it’s RASHOMON with man-toys.

As in this film’s predecessor, seems like a heist can only be pulled off successfully in past tense. (Clooney should wipe that smirk off his face before someone slaps it off.)

As for the two women in the mix (Isabel, out to bust Rusty’s taut butt, and Tess, incessantly prodding Ocean to renounce thievery) – seems they were only hounding their men until a big enough heist brought in enough income to reconcile them with Crime being a viable vocation. The final scene sees all these megastars partying around a poker table – which speaks volumes about the vapid principles that the women supposedly stood on. Sure, their men have “sworn off crime” for the moment – but they’re Duplicitous Criminals! What else are they gonna do once the champagne and cheese dip are cleared?

In moving out from under the daunting yet protective shadow of Sinatra’s ELEVEN, Soderbergh’s TWELVE was less financially-successful than its predecessor. In deference to this genre’s trend, all the bombast, hyper-realism and implausibility must necessarily be ratcheted up on successive sequels, thereby we can rest assured that, although Sesame Street may cringe in anguish, “Thirteen will be the new Zero.”

END

The Hack Pack.

Whatchoo talkin ’bout, Cheadle?

As the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (and every other provincial, back-slapping institution for the purveyance of “arts”) quite often does, another faux-prestigious award needs to be invented for the sole purpose of giving it to just one guy: The Most Embarrassing Fake British Accent Of All Time – awarded to Don Cheadle in OCEAN’S ELEVEN. Surpassing even Keanu’s Idiot-British in BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA or MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, to call Cheadle’s abomination of the mother tongue “inauthentic” would be a compliment.

Cheadle is one of OCEAN’S ELEVEN, a group of super-thieves gathered by an ex-con, Danny Ocean (George Clooney) to heist three Las Vegas casinos simultaneously. Like that 1960 Rat Pack movie of the same name. Only dafter.

In the TV movie THE RAT PACK Cheadle played Sammy Davis Jnr., a role which called for the most talented actor of The Pack, as he had to mime not only singing, but tap-dancing, trumpet-playing and six-gunning, so it is with great concern that we view this exemplary actor’s abject ignorance and lack of perception of one particular inflective tongue, based on his own spoken language! (Well, actually, preceding his spoken language, but this ain’t the forum for resolving etymological beefs.)

Still, casting Cheadle as a warbling limey was only nominally more sensible than casting the shovel-mouthed Julia Roberts as a “beautiful woman.” And as casting choices go, this movie was at a disadvantage from the outset with the impossible task of filling the shoes of one Francis Albert Sinatra. In a role which Frank insouciantly tossed off as a lark (which cast all the more sheen on it for its rebellious bent), head-waggling George Clooney steps up as Danny Ocean. And fails.

With OCEAN’S 11, as with ROBIN AND THE SEVEN HOODS, or JAILHOUSE ROCK, or EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, we’re not so much dealing with movies, as with “movie stars.” (True to its pedigree, there are modern “stars” and “stars-to-be” sprinkled liberally throughout ELEVEN 2001.) Re-making films such as these will not capture the consecrated quality afforded the originals, the passage of time having transformed those icons into gods. It is merely a fiscal exercise, involving brand-name recognition (buy the rights and sully the nostalgia), curiosity quotient (we’ll get the Frank & Dino fans into the theater at least once), next-generation retro hipness (“I’m so kewl cos I dig the “classics”), crossover marketing (with this ensemble, we’re bound to get someone through the turnstiles) and providing A-List actors with work to keep them off reality shows.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the premise to heist Las Vegas casinos is the only tie with ELEVEN 1960, as this remake had to cater to the state of advances in hi-tech security, the screenwriter tasked with updating the story (Ted Griffin) sensibly eschewing re-creating The Rat Pack’s lo-tech heist note for note.

Of the gang, Brad Pitt is Clooney’s Dino; toss-up on Sammy Davis Jnr. (Bernie Mac or Don Cheadle); Matt Damon is the privileged kid, so suffices for Lawford; excepting Elliott Gould and Carl Reiner, the remainder of the Eleven are “passengers,” including Ben Affleck’s brother and James Caan’s son gaily taking on half-dimensional roles.

Maybe it’s just that previous generation’s devil-may-care tilt at Life (or at least, the media’s reporting of it) that gives ELEVEN 1960 more of a rose-colored flare than all the gadgetry and gags this remake offers as collateral. Though there are attempts at capturing the magic and camaraderie of the original (Clooney’s best line to Pitt, “Ted Nugent called – he wants his shirt back”), this movie’s redemption is in its slick production value – it may ring hollow as a buddy-piece, but it slams along frenetically with a dapper soundtrack to match and is truly a guilty ocular pleasure, highly watchable for its appealing camerawork, lighting and set design.

ELEVEN 1960 packed a hilarious, if not frustrating, twist ending – unequivocally a more substantial wallop than the anchor this remake is built on: the interpersonal fizzle between Danny Ocean and the “beautiful woman.” Both the relationship and the movie end the same way: Nothing Happens.

With this ensemble, one would expect roiling acting chops flung at the viewer like raw meat to lions, but the only players who consistently chew their roles delectably are Andy Garcia (as the casino owner who gets heisted), Gould and Reiner. Everyone else is flailing for substance, including Pitt and Clooney who only have a few good moments together; the rest of the time, vying for enough screentime trying to top each other for one of those provincial, back-slapping, faux-prestigious awards that already exists: People Magazine‘s Sexiest Man Alive.

My vote is for Frank Sinatra.

END