Interesting the first time, boring the second!

Rating: 4/10 (4 April 2010)

This is my second time viewing this and I enjoyed it and was on the edge of my seat the first time, but here on my second I saw this movie had nothing but a good story thats no fun to hear twice.
This movie is based on true events and the screenwriters adapted the film from Ben Mezrichs book 'Bringing down the house: The Story Of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas For Millions'. The book was also used for a movie from 1994 called The Last Casino.
The title of the book tells the story well enough but I will elaborate..A boy who's extremely smart gets sucked in by a teacher who knows the kid will be good with numbers and counting cards. The teacher has a few other students and he takes them to Vegas and they count cards and win millions of dollars. It's not as easy as it all sounds and they have a good system working together and they have casino guards constantly trying to catch them.
Not only is main character Ben realizing that life can be fun and that he might be letting his dreams slip, he is also finding he's losing his friends and changing from what he wants to be.
The real story is about some Asian kids at M.I.T. but here its mostly played by white kids. The actors were okay. Jim Sturgess was brought to my attention first in the wonderful Across The Universe movie and Jim did a wonderful job, it's one reason I picked 21 up to begin with. He is English and his voice coach did a wonderful job teaching him to speak more American. I am a huge fan of Kevin Spacey and usually think he chooses great roles. Laurence Fishburn is so so too, and I like seeing him as a bad guy in a co-staring role, never liked him in large doses so here he is fine. I do however want to point out I hate the Asian kid Aaron Yoo, he plays the same guy in every movie and is rather annoying. Josh Gad is another young actor I want to see less of, he's always playing the fat cliché geek friend in these movies and just does a horrible job.
This movie is okay, I wont lie and put it down, because I did enjoy it the first time, I will say all and all it's a nice little film...It's neither great or horrible..its average...worth a watch.. 4 out of 10 stars