just OK

Rating: 5/10 (24 March 2012)

Where the first movie was fun, this sequel was mildly entertaining. It went on a little long, but was never boring. It's watchable (as all crime movies like these should be), but not really entertaining. I wasn't having fun while watching a lot of Ocean's Twelve. I wasn't bored, either. I was in Limbo of the movie world. All of the Vegas glitz added to the first, and here it's drab European backgrounds. Steven Soderbergh's directing also makes the film harder to enjoy. The film's choppy-we don't see events that happened until after the fact (if that makes any sense), and there are so many subplots and characters with similar sounding names that eventually we stop caring. Whenever a movie makes me do that, I usually focus more in on the fun aspects of the movie. And sure, the movie had its fun moments, and never left me bored, but overall, it just lacked that ultra-cool style that the first one had.
Then again, every actor's back in cool form. Catherine Zeta-Jones is the newbie here, and although her character is barely defined, she still manages to be cool. George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt (being on screen probably more than anyone else), Matt Damon-they're all cool. But it's obvious that this isn't the best sequel that could have been made for Ocean's Eleven-the movie was originally written for a completely different movie, and then readapted to a sequel. Because of that, there aren't really any reminders on who these people were. I remembered Clooney, Roberts, Garcia, and a few character names and quirks (such as Pitt's obsessive eating), but, really, who were these people? Did Soderbergh think that we would all rush out to see the first one before seeing this? I'll bet as many people did that as the number who went to see the Russian Solyaris after Soderbergh made Solaris.