Seriously Missing Something

Rating: Null/10 (7 August 2002)

I tell you this movie had everything going for it, big budget, big stars, proven director, a cool 60's flick to remake, and everything just seemed to fall flat just the same. I really had high expectations for this film, seeing as how I'm a huge fan of Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, heist movies, ensemble casts, Las Vegas, and The Rat Pack. Amazingly it was still two of the least entertaining hours I've spent at the movies in years. Given what I am used to seeing from Soderbergh and Clooney (at least recently), I would have expected this film to be so more much more than it was.

Honestly I think that Ocean's Eleven suffered the most because it lacked restraint in the most superficial areas, leaving the rest of the movie severely lacking. They didn't seem to feel the need to present interesting characters because it had so many of them to take up the screen. Most of the eleven aren't all that important, they just have their little part of it and that's it. The two important ones outside of the eleven, are naturally more ubiquitous. Still quite disappointingly, those played by Julia Roberts and Andy Garcia, remain a mystery throughout. They were simply there, one character to be gotten and one to be beaten. Would it have been too much of a task to show us why Harry Benedict (Garcia) is supposed to be such a loathsome villain, or why Tess (Roberts) is supposed to be so desirable? These two are as one-dimensional as they come in movies, and that is a far cry from what we've seen in Erin Brockovich (2000), Out of Sight (1998), or Traffic (2000).
Surely the biggest disappointment however was the lack of restraint involving the heist on the casino itself. I mean honestly, one has to admit that too much of anything is a bad thing and too much elaboration is no exception. The heist that the gang sets up and attempts crosses the line from clever and cool to way-too-complicated-to-be-real long before its done. I found myself rolling my eyes a lot as I watched it played out. If Danny Ocean (Clooney) could come up with a scam like this, as intricate as it is, you wouldn't think he wouldn't be just getting out of prison. You'd think he'd be running an organized crime family, or he'd be in Congress or something like that. Watching the scam, it was all simply too much. It was like watching a clever rant that runs on and becomes long-winded and you find yourself checking your watch and staring at the floor (see Good Will Hunting). In this case, less certainly would have been more. If I am going to give the movie any praise it would have to be directed almost completely at Elliot Gould's character who provided the only funny scene with his re-telling of the most successful heists in Vegas history. That was amusing and that was about it.
I fully understand there are movies out there that just serve to entertain and do not deserve to be scrutinized because there's really nothing there but style and show (see the whole Bruckheimer collection). If only Ocean's Eleven could have deviated from this formula a little more. If the audience could have gotten into the characters and legitimately related to them, empathized with them, rooted for them, whatever, then the events of the movie would have carried some real weight. Ocean's Eleven, in devoting so much time to showing this ridiculously complicated scam play out, didn't have any time left for the fine points like that. All in all, it was too-big, too-stylish, and seriously too-forgettable. Damn, what a disappointment.