Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Kevin Spacey, what have you done!? You haven't made a decent film since 2003, and we all miss you.

Last night I watched 21. It's a wierd one. I don't know whether to slate it for being high concept, obvious and half an hour too long; or praise it for being better than Oceans Twelve, well structured and actually quite clever. How about both?

The slating...This film is far far far far too obvious. It works like the whole 'Don't think of a black cat!' trick, then even if you're thinking about not thinking about one, you're still thinking about one. There are moments in the film where Kevin Spacey, in a dreadful role, lectures the gambling superbrains about how 'this is not gambling, it's counting cards' and 'don't let your emotions get in the way', so what do you reckon is going to happen? Let the addictions and emotions commence. All, and I mean ALL, of the characters in this film are so so so so so so so so shit. Talk about stereotyping. You have sexy clever girl who knows best. You have geek-turned-hunk who will make a mistake regarding sexy clever girl. You even have fat geppy geek who is rejected by geeky friend once he is a hunk. It's so so see through. Don't even get me started on the asian characters, because that bordered on pathetic. Lawrence Fishburne is a glimmer of hope in this film, but then you get to know him and think 'well that's shit'.
The film is also just over 2 hours, which, for a teen movie is far too long. It could easily have been around the 90 minutes mark if they'd chosen to cut out the montages. But a Vegas film without a montage is like a Bond film with no villain.

One the plus side, I quite liked the story. The geekhunk gets roped into counting cards by his college lecturer in order to save money to pay his way through harvard med school. The med school is the MacGuffin in this film, it's not particularly important but it's the reason the film exists. The vegas scenes do get too frequent, but the scenes back in MIT in which Ben (geekhunk) tries to explain to the rest of his world where he goes at weekends are quite good. The breaking point between him and his nerd friends is a good scene, and Jim Sturgess is a good actor at his young age. And the one thing this film has is a moment that you don't expect, I feel the reason it is too long is so you forget certain plot points in order for the end to have an impact.

I did like this film, I managed to watch it all without grimacing, I just feel it is a little bit pointless. 0'dI recommend people watch The Sting instead of this, but if you want to see sexy Kate Bosworth or fancy a bit of Spacey action watch this. I remain indifferent.