You know, I don't get it.

Rating: 5/10 (16 November 2002)

Ocean's 11 isn't a bad movie. It's just too familiar. Caper movies are caper movies, but Ocean's 11 acts like it's covering new ground when it isn't. I caught this movie at a dollar theater and I thought: Soderbergh? Clooney? Roberts? Pitt? Garcia? Gould? Cheadle? Damon? How could I go wrong?

What follows is an extremely predictable series of events that I saw coming way before I was supposed to. For example, as soon as we find out Clooney used to be married to Julia Roberts and is now seeing Andy Garcia, we can easily see what will unfold an hour and change later. The Clooney-Roberts relationship is an unconvincing, tired cliche, and it takes the whole movie to show us the predictable results.
As soon as Clooney discusses his extravagant and unlikely plot, we know he's going to get away with it. And when the twist arrives, you just shrug and say ok. Soderbergh is one of my favorite directors and while he occasionally brings up the occasional vibrant scene, he can't get past what is easily one of the most predictable capers in recent times. Just about everything in the movie telegraphs its punches.
I also saw Heist and The Score, but those movies had dynamic dialogue, dynamic relationships, dynamic performances and enough verisimilitude to draw you into the caper and leave you wondering what the characters were going to get away with. The dynamic in Ocean's 11 is "Look how cool we are." There's very little danger. You never get the sense that the characters are real people and therefore we never really care about them. The only exception being Carl Reiner's Saul.
Clooney and company are fun to watch for the most part, but the story is strictly by-the-numbers entertainment with Soderbergh only occasionally pausing to inject some welcome Soderbergh-like visuals.

All in all, it's not a total misfire, but it could've been trimmed and would've benefitted from an injection of humanity and originality. Highly recommended for people who haven't seen very many capers. Everyone else, don't expect the movie to blow you away.