Ocean's 13 prepares to dive

George Clooney wouldn't be a newly-crowned Oscar winner if he didn't almost immediately take up making a movie far below his new station, and I'll be damned if the just-officially-announced Ocean's 13 isn't that film. Obviously it's not surprising that a successful film would have a sequel, even though Ocean's 11 didn't call for one, nor is it surprising that the success of that sequel would generate a third film. The confines of the genre film, however - in this case the "heist picture" - require that the films' plots are all rather similar. Either that or Clooney and company are just trying to make the same film three times and hoping no one will notice, even though the quality is bound to deteriorate each time. If getting Ocean's 12 from Ocean's 11 was like taking a color plate and making a black-and-white copy of it, I expect Ocean's 13 will be like taking that copy and sending it via fax, and then the fax machine on the receiving end is located under a two-ton pile of horse manure.

Ocean's 11 was actually a fun movie, but the worst thing that could have happened was that its stars enjoyed working together. That made the second movie awful because everyone was just going through the motions, probably to avoid getting too tired to attend various all-night poker parties. It's okay to make a movie about how much cooler you are than the general populace if you're actually the Rat Pack, but I thought that kind of gin-soaked lounge-act machismo went out of vogue when the mob stopped owning so many casinos.

Source: Clooney, Pitt to resume scheming for "Ocean's 13" (Reuters)