Flashy but safe vanity piece

Rating: 5/10 (4 December 2001)

Barely watchable, the first Ocean's Eleven was a vanity piece. It was an excuse for some hepcats to get together, drink a few martinis, do a few numbers and film a caper movie in their favorite city, Las Vegas. Forty-one years later comes Steven Soderbergh's highly anticipated remake, which amounts to another vanity piece for Clooney and Company, albeit a more watchable one. George Clooney and Brad Pitt swagger through the movie like a modern day Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. It's hard to say they add or subtract anything from the movie since it is all surface fluff and retro eye candy. The biggest disappointment is Julia Roberts. Her relationship with Clooney and Andy Garcia is never really fleshed out, so she seems little more than runway model for some slinky dresses. It's a shame this talented actress is reduced to the worthless `love interest'. It would have been more interesting to inject some estrogen into the film by making her one of the master thieves. Soderbergh shows a deft hand in style. This is one of the more colorful films he has directed. It has a sort of 60's wacca-wacca feel. Unfortunately he has a heavier hand with his actors. Elliot Gould is allowed to go slightly over the top, but Carl Reiner is restrained like a prisoner on death row. We know this veteran comic genius is capable of so much more. I kept waiting for him to cut loose, but it never happened. The screenplay plays it too safe. At no point do we sense that our heroes are in any danger or the job is in jeopardy. We know they will succeed, so all the tension that drives the movie is gone. What's left is the cleverness of the heist, and it is plenty clever. There are a few laughs peppered here and there, but for the most part it's played too straight.