Reviewed August 29, 2017
Ocean’s Eleven meets My Name is Earl, and it was wonderful. A few people requested that I watch and review this movie, so I sat through 2 hours of a heist movie run by the premise that while the hick plotters are stupid, everyone else is even dumber. And it works, cause Steven Soderbergh (the Ocean’s series, Magic Mike) is a master at the complex ensemble heist movie. Definitely a solid watch and enjoyable roller coaster of a movie.
The Bad:
- WTF Hillary Swank.
- As amusing as it was, what was the whole point of the Sebastian Stan/Seth McFarlane side plot? It didn’t end up being important, the few interactions they had could have easily been written out to be random dudes or to not happen at all, and having such high profile actors in pointless side spots seemed really strange. Felt more like filler to pad the movie’s length, which is just a standard 2 hours.
- Does every stepdad in movies have to be a total douche-nugget? Just curious, cause it’s kind of a major trend and the movie uses it as an underlying theme to establish how much of a good-man-driven-too-far Channing Tatum’s Jimmy Logan is
- Adam Driver and Katie Holmes. Were…underwhelming. I can see arguments for Driver being decent; maybe I didn’t like his very sullen/dumb portrayal of Clyde
- All the stereotypes
The Good:
- All the stereotypes
- Channing Tatum and Daniel Craig, holy damn. Great acting. Their sister, played by Riley Keough, was also quite great.
- The entirety of the prison sequences. All of it. Especially the GoT jokes. Just…amazing.
- DAMMIT JERRY/GARY/LARRY/TERRY YOU FIRED MAGIC MIKE
- Sebastian Stan and Seth McFarlane’s acting. Again, not sure what the narrative point was, but the two of them had fun in their roles (and wtf accent was Seth going for there, but it was hilarious)
- The plot twists among plot twists. Had to actually look at my watch during what ended up being the second act because I thought the movie was legit over. And on that note….
- The third act. It seems like a slog, but I loved the way it was paced. You think it’s over and it’s Return of the King levels of “is this ending yet?”, only to realize it’s just setting you up for even more fun at the finale. Which…felt exactly like the ending of Ocean’s 11, so not sure if they plan to franchise this or what (it’s not doing amazing in theaters, but nothing is at the moment).
- The amusing semi-satire look into the insanity of kiddie pageants
- Gummy Bear Bomb, aka the Joe Bang
Again, I enjoyed it. Same format worked for the Ocean’s movies, but this one had a completely different style to it.
Getting Reel with Mr. Sunshine 