One of the many parts of Ocean's Eleven's terrific legacy is the mistaken notion that all you really need for a film to be smooth and pleasant is a sufficient number of A+ actors playing some effervescent version of themselves.

This is, of course, not the case: Ocean's Eleven has many imitators and few peers (Logan Lucky being one of the few), because dedicating a film to the pursuit of pure pleasure is more difficult than it looks, and made more so by hackneyed attempts to shoehorn in an Albanian mobster subplot.

Parts of this movie feel deeply successful. The first few montages of Old Clooney driving through sleepy wintertime New York is borderline pornographic; Austin Abrams' four minute monologue is a tour de force that manages to hit a Linklater-esque melange of earnestness and humor; Clooney and Pitt sparring with one another is, even in a not-great film, fun.

But the first act falls off a cliff and into the realm of Red Notice-tier "what the fuck are these setpieces, anyway?" quicker than even a cynical viewer might expect. We are treated to the world's most bizarrely choreographed chase scene; an ethnically ambiguous "Club Ice" with a pager-sized MacGuffin; a too-long shooting sequence involving three people walking straight ahead and shooting blindly as if they're redcoats on an FPS with the difficulty turned down to zero.

Your love (or, rather, your acceptance) of this movie will hinge on just how charmed you can be Pitt and Clooney, gamely smirking and chuckling at the increasingly-vacuuous goings-on while perfectly well-clad.

For me: they elevated the movie, but not enough to warrant rating it anything more than a not-unpleasant way to pass the time.

(One little needle to end on: something about this movie's relentless refusal to commit to a tone reminded me of the MCU and its awful determination to cycle viewership through irony, slapstick, CGI, and pathos all in the span of a single over-produced five minute scene, so I was satisfied to discover that the director and writer is most well-known for the most recent few Spiderman movies. At least he didn't try to cast Tom Holland, too!)

★★★