As you might expect, the followup doesn't measure up

Rating: 5/10 (24 November 2005)

I'll open with what appears to be a cheap shot: Julia Roberts looked completely pale, frazzled, and worn out in this movie. She was looking a bit brittle and haggard in "Ocean's 11", and the trend is far more advanced here. I could be wrong, but I don't think this was a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers, I think she's just looking used-up, and they couldn't disguise it. It's hard to believe how far downhill she's gone (at least in the superficial cosmetic sense) since her 'Pretty Woman' days. Since she's always gotten by on her dewy good looks and coltish ingénue charm, I can only hope for her sake that she's just going through a temporary rough patch. Or that she starts going for dramatic 'character' roles (like Jessica Lange) instead of romantic lead parts. I think putting her in front of the camera looking like this and passing her off as a 'glamour queen' could kill her career. Good luck, Julia, hope things work better for you soon. Take a couple of months and spend a few of your millions at a good health spa/ranch retreat, OK?
On to the real comments about the actual movie:
To tell the truth, I liked "Ocean's 11" very much indeed...but I recognized that there was an elusive chemistry at work in the film, an inspired blend of clever plotting, cast chemistry, classy actors, cool jazz music and superb directorial timing and rhythm that might be hard to duplicate. So when I heard that a sequel was in the work, I wasn't sanguine about its chances for being up to the first one. But hey, "X-Men 2" was also a sequel involving a huge cast, and IT turned out great, so...
I have to report that lightning didn't strike twice. "Ocean's 12", while reasonably watchable, has nowhere near the energy and fun of the original Soderbergh film.
The thing about "11", was that it was essentially a fairy tale, a caper film where dashing, likable scoundrels went up against the odds and won the day by being slyer, smarter, and smoother under pressure than anyone could ever imagine...and lived happily ever after. Nearly every scene had our underdogs saying or doing something surprising, something delightful, something funny or hilarious, or being just plain cool.
But the sequel takes a chance of going in a more realistic, downbeat direction. It shows our heroes not living so happily after all. It takes forever to get going and get the characters back together. It putzes around for several more scenes with no real forward progress after the basic dilemma has been established. It tests the viewers' patience with one false start after another as the bad guy from the first movie, the police, and a rival thief prove to be ahead of them at every turn. Instead of being delighted and dazzled by how cool they were, I was impatient for these guys to prove again what it was I liked about them the first time...and they just weren't doing it.
And when the final plot twist is revealed, it turns out that most of the time our gang had things under control after all, but the viewer wasn't allowed to see the actual execution of the 'real' caper until the very end. In the first movie, Ocean's crew essentially kept pulling new stuff out of a seemingly bottomless bag of tricks...but they did it right in front of the audience. But in this case, the most important 'trick' is simply sloppy writing that cheats the audience. And BTW,it was a serious miscalculation to have Julia-Roberts-as-Tess her impersonate Julia-Roberts-the-celebrity part of a scam - it was a self-indulgent 'in-joke' that didn't work at all.
In the message boards, one commenter astutely observed that, the real point of the the 2nd half of the movie was NOT to beat the rival art thief, it was to reunite Zeta-Jones' character with her father; once you realized this, some of the previous scenes made more sense. I'll buy that, but it doesn't change the fact that aside from a lingering shot of a back-pack sitting beside Pitt on a jet, and an inexplicable smirk on Pitt's face as he is led away in hand-cuffs, there is very little to clue the viewer about this development in the plot. The director and the screenwriter just didn't play fair.
When you have this many talented actors together, something good is bound to leak through in spite of everything, and that is the case here. Some of the cast byplay is still fun and amusing. Zeta-Jones is a striking screen presence, and no time spent watching her on a movie screen is ever wasted. The rival art thief is the very embodiment of Continental cool and suaveness, and the sequence where he uses Capoeira to 'dance' through a laser maze is the visual highlight of the film (even if it seems like a shameless swipe from "Entrapment").
And while I missed the swinging cool tunes of the first movies sound track, I felt that the more jagged, rough edged techno stuff playing this time around was quite compelling and added quite a bit to the movie.
This might be one of those movies that improves with repeated viewings. (like the 1st "Star Trek" movie,"Kung Pow", and "Hellraiser IV"). Since I know where the highlights are, I can sit patiently through the dull and irritating spots since I know that a good bit is coming up soon. I hope so,anyway.