Alternate Title: Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend
One sentence synopsis: Danny Ocean's sister recruits a team of female thieves to steal a valuable diamond necklace from the New York Met Gala.
Things Havoc liked: I really liked Ocean's Eleven (the Clooney version). I did not like
its sequels. In this, I expect that I resemble largely every moviegoer
in America. The original (yes, I know it's a remake, shut up), was a
cool, confident heist film, one that held together well, had interesting
character actors playing interesting character roles, and was overall a
template for how modern heist movies should be made. Soderbergh has
gone on to bigger and better things since the Ocean's series seemingly
ended, but here comes Gary Ross, of Pleasantville and the surprisingly
good Free State of Jones, to give us an all-female version of the
formula.
All-female versions of movies, well... let's be honest with ourselves here, they generally suck. They suck because the selling point of the movie is simply that the cast is female, with no thought given to making the movie stand out from their source material in any way beyond this, meaning that the film is almost definitionally derivative, often resulting in abject crap like the Ghostbusters remake of 2016. But to do this as a heist film makes a lot more sense. Heist films are inherently derivative, in that the plot is effectively "steal some shit", and the film is the course of the characters going about stealing it. Doing an all-female version of that makes far more sense than remaking a specific film, especially if the cast is good.
And oh
yes, this cast is good. Cate Blanchett, an actress I love, plays Lou,
partner in crime to Debbie Ocean, our protagonist, and basically takes
on the Brad Pitt role from the original film, wisecracking and being
generally cool. Mindy Kaling, whom I love dearly, and Helena Bonham
Carter, whom I love dearly on the rare occasions when she's not working
with Tim Burton, both liven the cast tremendously, the former as a
jeweler desperate to get away from her domineering parents, the latter
as an Irish fashion designer desperate to get away from the piles of IRS
debt she has incurred through disastrous decisions (an early sequence
wherein one of her fashion shows flops magnificently is a highlight).
But the best element of the cast is Anne Hathaway, playing the
air-headed celebrity target of the heist itself, who gets all the best
material playing the sort of person who can lose someone else's
$150,000,000 necklace and get angry at them for being upset.
Heist films live or die by their plot coherence, and Ocean's 8 manages to avoid the pitfalls that ruined movies like Logan Lucky by having one that works. The key here is plausibility. The steps that the girls take to steal the jewels they are after make sense within the context of the film, even if a sharp-eyed smark can find ways in which things would fall apart in the real world. We can follow the action from start to finish, and the obligatory twists as the plan almost falls apart and is rescued at the last second are believable, if extreme. This is not as minor a factor as it sounds, as it takes real skill to put together a plot that convincingly sounds like an impossibly difficult plan pulled off by a team of skilled con artists and thieves, and not like a load of writer contrivance designed to get the audience forcefully to the next scene.
Things Havoc disliked: You may have noticed, if you are familiar with this movie, that when I
praised the cast, I neglected to mention the actual lead, Sandra
Bullock, an actress I also dearly love, and who is just not good at all
in this one. I don't know what went wrong, if she made a bad set of
decisions in terms of her acting or if the director gave her bad
instructions, but she's terrible
in this film, attempting to replicate the George Clooney chill by
simply bleeding all emotion out of her character entirely. Everyone
else in the movie manages to evidence cool without evidencing such a
boring affect, so why Bullock can't is utterly beyond me.
But the
main problem with Ocean's 8 is that it's just... alright. It has an
all right plot with an alright heist attached to it, planned and
executed by alright characters to meet its alright ending with some
alright jokes along the way. It managed to entertain for its run time,
but only just, and leave a positive impression, but only slightly. It's
in every way a 'passable' film, not excelling, not failing, just pretty
decent across the board. Whether this is because there was no real
intention to make it more than "alright", given that most movies of its
type are not even that, or because whatever thrills and excitement the
filmmakers intended to add to it simply didn't make it through, I have
no idea. The result is the same. Ocean's 8 is an alright film. It is
not much more.
Final thoughts: I really hate writing reviews like this one, as movies that engender a
passionate response, be it positive or negative, are much easier to
review. Still, I can't get mad at Ocean's 8, as it is a perfectly
serviceable, pretty decent movie, one I will not be recalling with scorn
once the end of the year worst list comes around (probably). Go see it
if you are enthusiastic about the cast or concept, and skip it if not.
It makes very little difference either way.
Next Time: Dinosaurs!
Things Havoc liked: I really liked Ocean's Eleven (the Clooney version). I did not like
its sequels. In this, I expect that I resemble largely every moviegoer
in America. The original (yes, I know it's a remake, shut up), was a
cool, confident heist film, one that held together well, had interesting
character actors playing interesting character roles, and was overall a
template for how modern heist movies should be made. Soderbergh has
gone on to bigger and better things since the Ocean's series seemingly
ended, but here comes Gary Ross, of Pleasantville and the surprisingly
good Free State of Jones, to give us an all-female version of the
formula.All-female versions of movies, well... let's be honest with ourselves here, they generally suck. They suck because the selling point of the movie is simply that the cast is female, with no thought given to making the movie stand out from their source material in any way beyond this, meaning that the film is almost definitionally derivative, often resulting in abject crap like the Ghostbusters remake of 2016. But to do this as a heist film makes a lot more sense. Heist films are inherently derivative, in that the plot is effectively "steal some shit", and the film is the course of the characters going about stealing it. Doing an all-female version of that makes far more sense than remaking a specific film, especially if the cast is good.
And oh
yes, this cast is good. Cate Blanchett, an actress I love, plays Lou,
partner in crime to Debbie Ocean, our protagonist, and basically takes
on the Brad Pitt role from the original film, wisecracking and being
generally cool. Mindy Kaling, whom I love dearly, and Helena Bonham
Carter, whom I love dearly on the rare occasions when she's not working
with Tim Burton, both liven the cast tremendously, the former as a
jeweler desperate to get away from her domineering parents, the latter
as an Irish fashion designer desperate to get away from the piles of IRS
debt she has incurred through disastrous decisions (an early sequence
wherein one of her fashion shows flops magnificently is a highlight).
But the best element of the cast is Anne Hathaway, playing the
air-headed celebrity target of the heist itself, who gets all the best
material playing the sort of person who can lose someone else's
$150,000,000 necklace and get angry at them for being upset.Heist films live or die by their plot coherence, and Ocean's 8 manages to avoid the pitfalls that ruined movies like Logan Lucky by having one that works. The key here is plausibility. The steps that the girls take to steal the jewels they are after make sense within the context of the film, even if a sharp-eyed smark can find ways in which things would fall apart in the real world. We can follow the action from start to finish, and the obligatory twists as the plan almost falls apart and is rescued at the last second are believable, if extreme. This is not as minor a factor as it sounds, as it takes real skill to put together a plot that convincingly sounds like an impossibly difficult plan pulled off by a team of skilled con artists and thieves, and not like a load of writer contrivance designed to get the audience forcefully to the next scene.
But the
main problem with Ocean's 8 is that it's just... alright. It has an
all right plot with an alright heist attached to it, planned and
executed by alright characters to meet its alright ending with some
alright jokes along the way. It managed to entertain for its run time,
but only just, and leave a positive impression, but only slightly. It's
in every way a 'passable' film, not excelling, not failing, just pretty
decent across the board. Whether this is because there was no real
intention to make it more than "alright", given that most movies of its
type are not even that, or because whatever thrills and excitement the
filmmakers intended to add to it simply didn't make it through, I have
no idea. The result is the same. Ocean's 8 is an alright film. It is
not much more.
Final Score: 5.5/10
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