Ocean’s 8 - Review

Ocean’s 8

Academy Award winning actresses Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock and Anne Hathaway headline an all-star supporting cast in the all-female spin off of the George Clooney 2001 “Ocean’s 11” now titled imaginatively “Ocean’s 8”.

In this effort we see Debbie Ocean (Bullock) and just like her brother we find her in an orange jump suit being interviewed to be paroled from prison after spending five years, eight months, 12 days and counting for a caper that she was busted for in an FBI sting. But just like her older brother Debbie spent all of that incarcerated time planning not only to being more careful in the future but devising a caper which will be the biggest heist of her life including knowing what and who it's going to take. A team of the best people in their fields starting with her partner-in-crime Lou Miller (Blanchett). Together they begin to recruit a crew of specialists, including jeweler Amita, street con Constance, suburban mom Tammy, hacker Nine Ball, and fashion designer Rose to.pursue the target of a priceless necklace worth more than $150 million that will be on display at the annual New Met Gala.

REVIEW: “Ocean’s 8” isn’t bad it’s just not very interesting mostly because they seem more interested in mimicking the more successful Oceans 11 than being imaginative or taking new risk with this effort. Instead all you find yourself doing is watching this stellar cast going through the paces of some boilerplate conversations and boilerplate actions that never feel exhilarating at any point. Thus we the audience have been given the task or burden of knowing up front that they will get away with their heist and then watching them for the next 2 hours minimally being clever in executing their caper with the occasional unanticipated obstacle seemingly thrown in for a moment of intrigue.

Also the story is full of technical flaws and just dumb stuff ranging from Debbie Ocean running a scam to stay overnight in a hotel without a security key card. Stealing clothing from Saks 5^th Avenue without remotely drawing any suspicion from store security. And finally one of the cast members actually painting their toe nails while the caper was in progress. But the biggest problem to this film is the absence of a real villain to be the counter weight to the plot. In Ocean’s 11 you had a legitimate smart ruthless villain in Andy Garcia who played Terry Benedict the owner of the Bellagio Hotel Las Vegas robbed by Danny Ocean. While he lost his money he was still nonetheless Danny Ocean's equal intellectual match throughout the film. There is no such character in Ocean 8. Instead the villain persona is substituted through the portrayal of a few naive dunces to make their heist even easier to pull off. This vacuum of not having a real foil to contrast with just made big chunks of the film boring.

Now there were a couple of excellent performances by Anne Hathaway as the target who would be wearing the jewels at the Met Gala and late night Host actor James Corden who played with real zeal and smarts an Insurance fraud investigator towards the last 30 minutes of the film. They both were great. But all in all there is is nothing really memorable about this slick stylish effort at all. Its less a smart crime caper and more of a loose goose “Lite Ocean Breezy 8” story of some really beautiful sexy women just behaving badly with diamonds.

2.50 Stars.