Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

They say diamonds are a girls best friend, and these women will go to extreme lengths to get their hands on one particularly pricey bestie.

After being locked up for five years, Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) has been released early on good behavior…. and is immediately up to her old tricks.

Grifting runs in Debbie’s blood, as does the urge to pull off the biggest con anyone can think of. She has had five long years to make sure her plan is full proof, but she can’t do it without her partner in crime Lou (Cate Blanchett).

Being a con artist is just that; an artform, but it’s one that requires a team of talented individuals, especially if Debbie hopes to rob a necklace worth $150million at one of the most secured and exclusive events in the world.

It’s a job worthy of an Ocean.

Ocean’s 8 was an okay movie. One of the opening scenes where we see Debbie con her way into getting a new wardrobe and a suite at a nice hotel was fun to watch, and set her up as a smooth, confident and seasoned grifter.

The heist itself was clever enough and it was interesting that they chose to set it, for all intents and purposes, in “the real world”. It created an environment that the audience was familiar with and added an air of realism to the crime – like someone could actually go ahead and pull off a robbery at the next Met Gala Ball.

I’m all for the Ya Ya Sisterhood feminism stuff, but to me that didn’t really come across in the movie, aside from one pointed line. This is actually an upside because it felt like they wrote the movie and then cast women, instead of writing the movie around having an all female cast.

My favourite character was Daphne Kluger, who was played by Anne Hathaway. She was a very strange character that Hathaway embodied almost too easily. It was a side of Hathaway I hadn’t seen before and wholly enjoyed.

Lastly I want to state that I adored Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett as a duo. They worked well together and aesthetically looked great next to each on screen. I’d be here for another collab between them… I’m thinking; ass kicking gun wielding sisters avenging their brothers death?

Of all the good points I made about the movie, there is one thing that offsets a lot of that; It was a little boring. From the moment Debbie was released from jail, everything ran like clockwork. I was never once in fear that their plan wouldn’t work, and for a heist movie; that’s not a good thing.

Eight is a large number for any ensemble cast, and aside from certain characters being great with computers or being able to nimbly lift objects off of others, a lot of the characters didn’t have much going for them. I caught myself forgetting people who weren’t on camera, were even part of the team.

So Ocean’s 8 is cited as a heist comedy film. I can tell you now that it wasn’t remotely funny, and I think a thread of humor would have helped. I didn’t need to be slapping my knee every scene or have a character slip on a banana peel, but just that one stereotypical comic relief character would have added a little more to the movie.

Okay two things I personally wasn’t a fan of. That “look what we’ll do with our money” ending. It was just cringey. Especially because we had to go through it eight times. Eight. It was a nice idea but could have been done in a way that wasn’t smeared with cheese.

Lastly I didn’t like James Cordon as an addition to the cast. To me I was watching James Cordon host of the Late Late Show – not “John Frazier, insurance fraud investigator.” He’s almost too big/distinctive to get away with acting even though I know that’s what he did first.

Like I said there was nothing wrong with Ocean’s 8, but it felt like it was missing a few underlying elements. Maybe I would have liked it a lot more as a limited series where the stakes could have been teased out and we got to know more about the crew? … Or perhaps I’m just making excuses for an average movie I wish I liked more than I did.