Feature-length advert for Clooney and Co.

Rating: 1/10 (23 August 2005)

Having not seen all of the first film, I decided to watch the second. And ended up finding myself repulsed from the screen by the sheer audacity of putting twelve famous people on screen with no plot, and letting them make a movie about how great they are. At times, I found more interest in a a leaflet for mobile phones that fell out of a magazine.
It's basically a very long advert. It has the slewing camera angles, the 'cool' background music, the freeze frames at random points. It's like a documentary of how much fun these famous people have when they're put in a room together. And paid several million dollars.
The Julia Roberts scene is hideously self-referential, relying on pop culture to carry itself through rather than any semblance of plot. But possibly the worst scene in any film I've seen is that of the thief Night Fox evading laser detection systems... by putting some funky French techno onto his iPod, and break dancing through the lasers. Never mind the fact that the lasers keep passing through his body, it still ranks as one of the sheer stupidest scenes in movie history.
This film is smug, flashy, soulless and far, FAR too knowing for its own good. If you want a decent heist movie, watch the original Italian Job. Not this.