Robin and the Seven Hoods
Ocean’s Eleven (Widescreen Edition)
The Rat Pack’s Las Vegas
Sinatra & the Rat Pack: The Story Behind the Original Movie Ocean’s 11
Ocean’s Twelve

Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Comment: I enjoyed this movie tremendously. I like the ocean 11 with george clooney, brad pitt and matt damon. but the orignial is…well…just the original. you can’t compare the new one to this. I love it when dean martin is playing a kick in the head and all the girl swoon him. also the clever plot of putting the money into the trash can, and i never would have guessed the ending. it came as a huge surprise!

I’m as fascinated with the Rat Pack as much as anyone, but I think it’s important to take the rose colored glasses off when critiquing the work of these sometimes neurotically insecure and deeply flawed individuals in order to judge a movie on its own merits. I think too many peoples’ sense of self identity is reflected in the image of the Rat Pack to ever really do objectivity justice.

Humor and style do evolve (my father, for example, finds no humor in some of the most critically acclaimed shows on TV today), so it’s hard to compare two different eras. Nevertheless, great, timeless cinema came out of this era, but this work is not in that category. By any movie standards it drags heavily and its “hipness” seems contrived and forced into an otherwise hokey vibe. The musical interludes and final stride down the Strip are incredible for reinforcing this image (and I do love them as stand alone moments), but jar so completely with the tone and style of the rest of the movie that I can’t help but think this was just a vanity flick to satiate the appetites of fans hungry to devour media images of the highest style and pizzaz that era had to offer.

Regarding the issue of whether this movie appeals only to an older generation, it should be noted that those in the younger generation who have reviewed this movie favorably are teenagers. There may be something deeper at work here – an adolscent (or arrested adolesecent) quest for a two-dimensional, this-is-what-cool is mantra by fans of any age.

To me this movie is little more than a vain time capsule revealing how much tighter, interesting, and more sophisticated not only most movies but perhaps society at large has become. That said, there’s still an audience for the old school casino in which dank slot machines greet you at the door on the way to the cheap buffets, just as there is and always will be an audience that smugly holds this 1960s Ocean 11 as superior. I know I’ll take a hit in terms of “was this review helpful” points from this crowd, but by the nature of who they are they got away with a lot that would never compel an objective viewer free from the folklore enmeshed in this intriguing group’s fame.