Obviously I'm being facetious as I have not seen every movie of 2008, but it is pretty horrible. I won't go into detail about the obviously wrongs with this movie such as how awesome the book "Bringing Down the House" is and how they did a completely white wash of the entire cast, and removed everything that could make it an actual movie with shots of the Vegas skyline to turn it into one big commercial for Planet Hollywood for slow high schoolers who will now want to go there when they turn (high five) 21 and "tear up the strip"! What's this, is this a line of dialogue, no need for that, we'll just show a pile of money constantly that will make things hardcore. Fun fact, they couldn't use the title Bringing Down the House because of that very excellent movie starring Queen Latifah and Steve Martin, way to go guys. I could finalize this review by saying this is a movie featuring college and Las Vegas (not to mention a sex and torture scene) that is PG-13, so you know where the film is going and that fact alone would qualify it as horrible. This film does answer the timeless question of how many studio plants does it take to succeed.
The movie opens with this kid whining an bitching about how he wants to go to Harvard medical school. You know he really wants to go there because he said it has been his dream his whole life, okay I'm convinced enough. This is where he finds out Harvard Medical school is a tad expensive and he might not be able to go because of that one reason, meaning he needs to be rich or get a scholarship. Apparently this is the first guy who has ever had to pay for college with loans in the world, and instead he will need to come up with the whole sum of of money for several years of education in a short amount of time. Oh no, he only works at a men's fine clothing store, he won't be able to make over $300,000 doing this. By the way thank god they showed him doing basic addition and multiplication in his job or else I wouldn't know he was one of the best people in the world at math. I'm surprised they didn't have to show him how they book the hotel through expedia. And what's this they have to explain to him how blackjack (21) is played, in the movie, to the character, for an entire 5 minute scene. Finally, now we can follow the story.
Wait a minute, you're saying the movie didn't open up with this character learning about what obstacle he has to overcome? They open up with him in a Vegas talking about how they are up a lot, wearing cool disguises and basically describing the entire movie in the first 2 minutes? You mean they used the original idea of showing a scene from the middle of the movie in the beginning. Wow now we know he will go from this straight laced kid, to this seedy gambling underground, how will that happen? I guess we have to watch and find out but I'm sure it won't have anything to do with the gambling that this film is based upon.
By the way great job editor Elliot Graham, I couldn't tell that Lawrence held back his punch at the final second of when he was torturing that kid. Probably doesn't have to do with anything.
This movie insults intelligence at every chance it gets. These are kids going to MIT yet they are doing the most basic form of card counting. The system that any moron with a hour on a Sunday could learn and do at a casino. I wouldn't say do well since this form of card counting probably increases your chances of winning by 1-2% which is significant but enough for this band of losers to rip off casinos for hundreds of thousands of dollars probably not and not even close to what the actual MIT students used. The characters are shown spending hours, nights, weeks working at it. Some of them can't even keep up with it even though their characters are supposed to be the best of the best from MIT that this professor has had picked. Why don't they think an audience would get it? Whoa they crossed their arms behind their back, that is such an elusive signal, and let's do that every time and not adapt to ever evolving security threats. But hey maybe I'm wrong the movie did gross about 81 million domestically which puts it at maybe a few more tickets sold than Social Network when accounting for inflation. So maybe this whole making movies for dumb people is catching on.
Not going to lie, it's been awhile since I've seen this and I didn't feel like watching it again so just a few other things that pee'd in my cereal. There is this part where they have thousands in chips but the casinos are changing them soon, and they don't want to send any red flags about what they were up to so they give them to the strippers at the strip club in smaller amounts as tips. Strippers have never been known to rip anyone off, not to mention it wouldn't be odd for a line of 50 strippers turning in chips with them standing right beside them cheering. The $300,000 in the ceiling bit is frequently brought up but I at least can understand not taking it to a bank due to the whole money trail thing. But the great thing is there are these inventions called safes. Apparently they allow you to lock your money up with something called a combination that only you can open with it. I'm not sure but you could probably conceal those too. The real story takes place in the 90's but the movie is set in present time so there are these weird shifts where they are talking about technology like it is exists but we are way beyond it. Their big way to deflect security is to wear wigs, that is pretty much it, they are the same 4-5 kids within a couple tables and they partner up a lot. Great disguises guys. No such thing as facial recognition that was developed, or the fact that the dealer that is working 12 hour shifts would start to recognize people since that's pretty much their jobs. Not going to even delve into those spaz's and their robot contest.
I don't know, maybe I shouldn't be too hard on the film. Like I said it wasn't made for people who were born before 1992. When you bring in the talented genius that is Robert Luketic, aka the Kubrick of the 21st century, you just have to expect to shut your brain off, forget everything you know about interesting stories, and look forward to be dazzled by dozens of cliches. Which this is also a film by, hard to believe. Is telling your actors to just half ass it the new technique?
If you want to see a bunch of late 20 year old's with the minds of a tween running around vegas for 2 hours with a script written by someone who has seen a lot of movies about Las Vegas by all means rent this shitty excuse for binary code. If you want to see a real movie based on a book by Ben Mezrich, that actually bases it in the reality with which the story is based, go see Social Network. Could you imagine if this team had gotten their hands on that one? Uh, let's spend an hour of the story teaching this Zuckerberg kid how to log into his email account at Harvard where he discovers there is this thing called the internet. You stole facebook from us, gosh darn you meanie. Is there any way we can base this in Miami, we get more money from the tourism department if we do? Memo to all filmmakers, putting a bunch of emo hipsters in Vegas does not a cool movie make.
PS What happened to Kevin Spacey? I think the dude actually went to KPax. I realize that he produced The Social Network and he seems to be improving in that category and job title. But can you really compare anything he or anyone else has done to his work between 1994-1999. Just about off the top of my head, American Beauty, Seven, Usual Suspects, Outbreak, but this is kind of an interview, A bugs Life, The Negotiator, Midngith in the Garden, LA Confidential, A Time to “yes they deserive to die I hope they burn in hell” Kill, The Ref, and can’t forget IRON Will. I know he has done better outside those, but I pegged those as two great bookends with a lot of good in between. American Movie boom of course and The Ref. The Ref launched a lot of people.
But what was the difference between Social Network and 21, he wasn’t in this, that made it infinitely times better which shouldn't be the case. That first oscar broke his cherry the second one cracked his rectum.
