A damp squib :(

Rating: 2/10 (18 April 2006)

Well i hated everything about this movie, they took everything that was good about the first film and milked it totally ruining what could have been an interesting sequel. Clooney and Pitts smugness, Cheadle's abysmal accent, Gould's OTT theatrics, the clichéd romance(s), Garcia failing to convince as a 'scary bad guy', these are all points i was able to overlook in the first movie, namely because it had a decent plot, a well instigated heist and enough supporting characters to amuse and engage the mind.
Unfortunately all the negatives i mentioned came to the fore for the sequel. So Benedict found them all, why not escape and disappear again? Or why not hire somebody to kill him? The dude really is'nt that scary. I got the impression with this movie that all the characters wanted more screen time to express themselves which kind of got in the way of the story...it slowed things down unnecessarily.
Roberts playing Roberts was perhaps one of the most excruciating scenes i've ever witnessed in movies. They were so short of ideas they had to resort to something as lame and embarrassing as that. Simply pitiful.
The plot/heists were confusing and muddling not clever as they were supposed to be. And seeing as the movie was set in Europe we had the usual dull cameos from English 'actors' Izzard and Coltrane.
And then the whole Zeta Jones reuniting with her father ending seemed totally out of sync with the rest of the movie. This is a heist film right? Not a big budget version of a lonely hearts ad. Wholly inappropriate IMO.
I know what the studio was doing with Ocean's Twelve. They were making the obligatory sequel to anything that happened to be successful first time round. It's a sad state of affairs in modern Hollywood when supposed creative inspirations (such as Soderbergh) are so starved of fresh ideas they have to rehash their own movies to make a few bucks.
2/10