A drop in the Ocean

I've had this written for several days, but couldn't find the right time to post it. So I figured I'd toss it up this morning. And yes, I know, the movie opened weeks ago. But that's the way things work up here.


Some more of the big summer movies are beginning to make their way into town, although after Spider-Man 3 and Shrek 3 I was wondering if I wanted to brave the theatres again anytime soon.

However, last weekend saw Pirates 3 and Ocean’s 13 open. I would like to see a movie that doesn’t have digits at the end, but that’s going to have to wait until at least this weekend when I can finally get a bit “uppity”. As in Knocked Up and Surf’s Up start their run.

Still, Cathy was having a pretty crappy day on Monday so I thought some supper out and a movie might do the trick of cheering her up. So we took a chance and caught Ocean’s 13. Mercifully the crowd was smallish, older and well behaved. Not a screaming child, chatting teenager or buzzing cell phone to be found.

So how is the movie? We quite liked it. After the smarminess of Ocean’s 12, this was like a glass of cold water. I’m not saying there was great acting going on, but at least it didn’t feel like I was watching home videos of George, Brad and that gang’s great European vacation. However, it wasn’t up to Ocean’s 11 standards.

Now, perhaps that’s all but impossible anyway. Ocean’s 11 had the benefit of being cool seeing all of these people working together, getting to meet the characters and a pretty fun heist. Ocean’s 13 admittedly does have the pleasure of seeing all the actors work together again. And let’s face it, Clooney and Pitt work so well that you’ll pretty much want to see them in movies together all the time. Their scenes in Ocean’s 12 were pretty much the only bearable ones.

And they’re back in Vegas. And the heist is ludicrously over-the-top and kind of fun. At right around two hours, the movie doesn’t overstay its welcome.

I think my two main gripes with the movie were these. First, the heist didn’t fool anyone. Right from the start you knew what they were up to and how it was going to play out. There is fun in watching it and Al Pacino getting his just deserts. However, at least Ocean’s 11 and even Ocean’s 12 kept stuff from the audience. The pieces to how the heist was going to work was all there and if you were smart enough, you could figure it out before it all went down. If not, you could enjoy how it was all laid out there for you after the heist went down.

And then on the way home from the movie, you could begin noticing all the vast holes in the plot.

Anyway, that wasn’t in Ocean’s 13, which was disappointing. The payoff was a touch anti-climatic after all that work.

The second problem was that, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, Al Pacino was too restrained. He wasn’t villainous enough. Honestly, if you’re getting Pacino to be your heavy, you just let him go and chew up the scenery. He starts off nice and evil, but he seemed like he was sleepwalking through too much of the movie. Kind of disappointing, really.

Still, it’s fun enough and certainly the best of what I’ve seen of the summer movies.

One other interesting thing...while waiting to go and see the movie, I was checking some of the coming soon posters and saw this one.



Despite my aversion to the animal in question these days, I think it is a pretty goddamn cool looking movie poster. I loved the books and I really hope they managed to not horrifically screw up the movie. And at least they managed to make the bear look like a goddamn terrifying killing machine it is as opposed to something cute and cuddly that seven year olds want to play with.