Great story marred by horrible sound track . . .

Rating: 5/10 (11 May 2002)

Ocean's 11 is the story of 11 con artists/thieves getting together to rip off a wealthy casino magnate in Las Vegas. After we get to know everybody a theme of Robin Hood against the Sheriff of Nottingham comes to mind. Then the heist--although their methods can be explained as impossible to pull off by any stretch of the imagination one doesn't care because we are lifted away to a place where rooting for the bad guy is mandatory--kind of like in the Sting only about a tenth as convincing or enjoyable. Conversely, it's not fair to compare this film to the Sting because the Sting has a sound track that compliments the thoughts and actions of the characters, the era, scenes and locations. In O-11, The entire look and feel of the movie is back ground to, or is over shadowed by, a loud thumping repetitive bass and drum track which evokes nothing to the imagination but perhaps annoying car or jeans TV commercials. Las Vegas overflows with a rainbow of diverse music--none of which resemble the sounds in the O-11. Only twice, and very briefly, does the sound track support the locations, scenes and characters: the entrance of Sahl (played by Carl Reiner), and the very end of the movie. Gen-X folks will most likely be the only folks who can relate to this sound track. This movie, unlike the Sting, will never be a classic because of the irritating, emotionally devoid, dated, loud, frustratingly repetitive sound track (which one can not call music). In addition, because the history or magnitude of the relationship between Roberts and Clooney is never apparent, we never really care about the Julia Robert character--it is unimportant to the movie and her performance is week and boring not to mention there is no chemistry at all between her and Clooney. In fact, all the characters (with the exception of Reiner, Damon, and Garcia) seem to be acting or pretending and thus are not convincing. On the bright side, the script is clever and humorous. And there are some fun twists that surprise you. If you enjoy repetitive, loud, bass and drums, you will like this movie. If you like a good mystery/adventure/heist movie--try watching with the captions on and the sound off--it's much better that way. C+