"Ocean's 8" Review

An overheated topic in movies these days is the gender flip - retelling old stories with female casts (never replacing women with men, mind you) - which has piled culture war drama on top of the underlying creative laziness of Hollywood. While trying to appeal to the female audience with traditional boys movies has a reasonable business rationale, it has come with some nasty militant feminists undertones of "men need to learn that they are inferior and to be erased" and reflexive attacks upon anyone not toeing the PC line that these flipped movies are just wonderful, ascribing sexist and racist attitudes to the critics in the attempt to inoculate bad movies from criticism.

2016's Lady Ghostbusters debacle was a prime example as the film's trailers hinted at the impending disaster to come and rather than power through, the filmmakers and media enablers decided to attack the audience as sexist trolls who hate women and are just toxic masculinity patriarchy manbabies blah-blah-woof-woof. It's not that previously successful and talented actors and filmmakers made a bad movie; no, the audience was WRONG and must be punished for their refusal to appreciate the Empress's new dresses. The past months' rage over Star Wars: The Last Jedi where Star Wars fans have been deemed "toxic" and in need of purging have only further poisoned the atmosphere.

So into this fraught environment comes Ocean's 8, an all-female spinoff of the George Clooney-topped Ocean's 11-13 series helmed by Steven Soderbergh which came out in 2001, 2004, and 2007, respectively. Considering the movie started shooting in late-2016, it's been in the works long before the culture war was joined in earnest, so it's safer to presume that this was just a chance to see if gathering a bunch of likeable stars to engage in breezy capering and for the most part it delivers just enough on basic expectations to make it worthwhile.

Sandra Bullock stars as Debbie Ocean, Danny's sister, who opens the film being paroled from prison after nearly a six year stint after pledging to the parole board that she just wants to have a quiet normal life, work a job, pay her taxes. Right. In actuality she has been plotting a massive jewel heist in the form of a Cartier necklace with $150 million and in order to pull off her ridiculously convoluted plan, she has to recruit some old pals: Cate Blanchett (the sidekick/talent wrangler), Sarah Paulson (the fence whose suburban family thinks she's eBaying all the stuff in the garage), Mindy Kaling (jewlry expert), Rihanna (stoner hacker), Awkwafina (pickpocket), Helena Bonham Carter (washed-up fashion designer) tasked with dressing the mule and inadvertent #8 in the scheme, Anne Hathaway as a ditzy actress.

If there is a basic problem with Ocean's 8 it's that everything goes too smoothly and there is no obvious nemesis like Andy Garcia and Al Pacino served as in the Clooney-Pitt-Damon movies. A fellow with whom Bullock has a legitimate beef with is a secondary target in her scheme, but his being looped in requires the same stratospheric suspension of disbelief every other detail in the plot requires, if not more. EVERYTHING goes according to plan with every single player able to get to the precise position they need to be. There is a clairvoyant ability to know exactly where and how people will react and the few minor hiccups that occur are resolved in a manner that's super easy, barely an inconvenience.

Everyone performs well enough considering their sketchy characters, though Bullock seems too restrained and dour. Blanchett is clearly having a blast as she did in Thor Ragnarok, but the MVP is Hathaway who deftly does ditzy though ultimately turns out not as dumb as expected. Hey, if Clooney et al can get paid for sliding through a heist film, why not let the ladies have some?

There's a weirdly tacked-on feeling third (or fourth) act which I suppose was supposed to add some tension, but turns out to be almost another part of the plan based on the investigator's (James Corden) past encounters with the Ocean family, but by then we're in the outro portion of the film and who cares?

While inconsequential to the max and too slick for its own good at times, Ocean's 8 delivers fully on its modest expectations as long as you don't think too hard about it. If you like the cast, you'll like the movie, but it won't change your life.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.