There are movies which are produced for the sake of art. On the other hand, there are movies of which the main purpose is to make money. In the second type of movie, in general, the director brings together charismatic actors and actresses in order to draw attention away from the holes in the script and focus it on the cast instead. Unfortunately, “Ocean's Twelve” is one of those.
Although I expected just the opposite, “Ocean's Twelve” is a below-average film. Director Steven Soderbergh relies solely on the charm of the actors and actresses. Rather than an exciting or thrilling sequel to the preceding movie, “Ocean’s Twelve” is all about behavior, dialogue, and stars. I can definitely state that I didn’t enjoy the film. Here are some of the reasons.
First, the cheap and disconnected dialogues cast a huge shadow on the movie. The whole thing is like a Friday night talk show. The players do nothing except engage in meaningless chat with each other. They are like supermodels, simply showing up with different costumes in different scenes. There is no sense of creative story writing.
Secondly, even the few moments of the film that seem to have some sense of plot are basically a production for show business. Julia Roberts plays Tess, who is, in the movie, said to resemble the real Julia Roberts. [Maybe because they're the same person, ha?:-)] Tess is recruited to participate in a robbery, where her part consists of acting as if she is Julia Roberts. This scene is very boring.
Thirdly, there’s a scene where George Clooney wastes a lot of time trying to convince himself that he doesn't look like he’s 50 years old. (He's actually 44.) In order to do this, he asks his eleven friends (Ocean's Eleven), “Do I look like I'm 50?” But the truth is, no one cares how old he looks; he just seems extremely stupid with that lousy script.
One interesting point is that the movie both starts and ends with Catherine Zeta-Jones. At the beginning, a very attractive image of her is shown on the silver screen behind the title. At the end, she laughs beautifully, and then her image slowly becomes frozen and blurry. Actually, almost all of the scenes revolve around her. It's a like a fashion show: Zeta-Jones’ Spring/Summer 2005.
In conclusion, I can honestly state that the whole movie seems like a puppet show, in which Soderbergh selects two puppets (players) at a time, picks them up and has them talk to each other. During the first half, for a second,
I thought my grandma was telling me a bedtime story. My eyelids were slowly closing as the movie proceeded. During the ten-minute break, I left the theatre to wash my face, hoping I'd find an engrossing development in the second half of the story. But it was even worse… Although there were scenes where I laughed, most of the time
I couldn’t stop thinking, “Everybody (Ocean’s Twelve) is laughing and having a good time except, well, me.” Have fun and stay cool…

Rating (out of 5):

Atilla Karakurum (IE/IV)