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Go Home The (Actual) Movie Review: '21'

BOOKS AND ARTS MARCH 28, 2008

The (Actual) Movie Review: '21'

BY CHRISTOPHER ORR

Like many people, I've grown increasingly annoyed with movie
trailers that give away too much. So yesterday, as a thought experiment, I
wrote a review
of the blackjack flick 21 based solely on its overstuffed trailer.
Having now seen 21 (the movie) and
not just 21 (the trailer), I’d say my
pre-assessment was pretty close. The film is dull, overlong, morally confused,
and just not very much fun. There are a few small details I got wrong: The main
character, Ben, only wears sunglasses in a couple of scenes, and the shot of a bag
being thrown over his head, though spliced into the trailer in a way that suggested
it was done by casino security, is actually borrowed from another scene.

But my main miscalculation was that 21 is much, much worse than I anticipated. From the trailer, it
looked as though the film would have a little zip before it entered its
melodramatic doldrums. In reality, it’s slack and maudlin from the get-go. Ben
is saddled with a pitiable backstory (father dead, mother works in a bar) and a
pair of dorky, girl-phobic, robot-inventing friends--caricatures so lame that
the nation’s geeks should contemplate a class-action suit. I’d wondered what exactly
he needed the $300,000 for, given that he’s clearly already enrolled at MIT.
The answer is that he’s been accepted (early admission, no less) by Harvard Medical School,
but won’t be able to attend unless he can raise the cash. Tragically for him, 21 takes place in a universe where there
is no such thing as financial aid or moneylending of any kind (seriously: the
word “loan” is never uttered).

The mechanics of the card-counting scam are not “intricate,”
as I predicted, but rather numbingly simple. Unfortunately, the film seems
unaware of this, offering tedious, repetitive lessons in the mundane details. I
eventually lost count of how many times we were instructed that the word
“sweet” was code for “16,” but it must have been upwards of half-a-dozen. Also,
someone might have suggested to director Robert Luketic that not every blackjack scene needed to be dramatized with a montage of
flipping cards and accumulating chips set to loud, unimaginative techno pop.

I could easily go on--about the disappointing
Kate Bosworth, the I-have-no-idea-who-my-character-is-supposed-to-be Laurence
Fishburne, the fourth-rate dialogue, the comically inert romantic subplot--but
there hardly seems any point. Suffice it to say that when, at the end, the film
offers up an annoying remix of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” it
comes across less as accompaniment than as self-critique. If my experiment
demonstrated anything it’s that, by making the movie it advertises redundant,
sometimes the trailer-as-summary is a blessing in disguise.

Christopher Orr is a senior editor at The New Republic.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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20 comments

Brilliant. I hope you do more of these trailer reviews vs actual reviews in the future.

- Liz

March 27, 2008 at 8:45pm

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So apparently the main character is the first pre-med student not to hear of the Stafford loan? Mine are the size of house mortgage. Brilliant plot idea.

- Trevor MD

March 28, 2008 at 1:55am

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Ditto, very entertaining. Would appreciate a few more of these.

- Rob

March 28, 2008 at 3:54am

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As I wasn't planning to see this movie anyhow, I'm glad to know that the trailer was a superior viewing experience. From what you say, a movie that was actually about applying for financial aid (with a montage of the main character filling out FAFSA forms and balancing his checkbook) may actually have been more watchable.

- drdannyu

March 28, 2008 at 8:33am

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I love it! LOVE IT! Please, please do more!

- Tanaya

March 28, 2008 at 10:24am

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Bravo on the goddam ideal postmodern review. As for the endless repetitiveness, watch any movie with, *sigh*, ANY remotely technical information or plot (or both) and you'll find it rears up all the time. Just finished a chase/love scene? Well, then, it's clearly time to rehash out the entire plot for the theater's "dimmer bulbs."

- HellifIknow

March 28, 2008 at 11:22am

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Who knew you needed a medical degree to succeed in designing robots!

- membruto

March 28, 2008 at 11:55am

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drdan - yes, but you'd need some super-cool 80's montage music, about "this time, I'm gonna do it" and "now we're takin' it to the max". 20 minutes or so of that, while the main character sits at a desk and fills out the same form and occasionally takes a sip from a water glass, would be ROCKIN'.

-

March 28, 2008 at 12:39pm

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Oh, God, makes me wonder if there are lines like: Spacey: "Okay, time to go." Protagonist: "But, but I want to stay." Dealer: "Let him stay." Spacey: "No, it's time to go." Protagonist: [leaves table dejectedly] Protagonist: "I just...lost. A lot. I thought...I thought I was supposed to win." Spacey: "Only statistically!" Because that would make the best YouTube clip ever.

-

March 28, 2008 at 12:53pm

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The water glass is a nice touch.

- drdannyu

March 28, 2008 at 2:33pm

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Give away too much? How could you not - the story is as simple as it gets. Kid needs money for college. Turns to counting cards. The end. I saw the hour long Discovery channel program on the real MIT professor who started his rabble of student card counters and I wager it's a much more enjoyable (and free) show than this quasi-fact based movie.

- JWL2672

March 28, 2008 at 3:38pm

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This sounds like some version of "Bringing Down the House" or "Busting Vegas." The author is terrible - the books read like a 200 page article for Details magazine.

- Arclight

March 28, 2008 at 5:57pm

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You're to be commended, Chris, for managing to figure out a way to collect 2 paychecks for seeing a bad movie. ;)

- Ajax

March 28, 2008 at 6:28pm

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I just watched the movie and it was very interesting to me. Well I'm 13 years old =D so i didn't care about small details such as how many times they used the word sweet for their count.

- Ayon k

March 29, 2008 at 8:07pm

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uggg! I think ur review is all wrong! I liked the movie. I admit sturgess did a better job in across the univrse, but this movie was not boring!!! I hate when ppl like this review movies! They think they know everything, but form ur own opponion and see the movie for yourself!

- Lizze

March 30, 2008 at 2:03pm

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Very funny, please keep these up.

- Gillian

March 31, 2008 at 1:03pm

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And what about Larry Fishburne playing the security guard? Racist typecasting (big scary black guy beats up frail, white girly-boy). If only he had more self-respect.

- Kev

April 2, 2008 at 6:32pm

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come on, this is why i hate critics, ITS JUST A F$%^&* MOVIE, A$$!!! acting was good, and it was simple. I agree that it seems like sturgess(ben)hasnt heard of a loan. and if you are a 4.0 student, you should figure how to get in. But the ending was good and if you paid 5 bucks(like i did) it was well worth it. (by the way, the nerds were only a small forgettable part of the movie, and you had to blow it out of proportion) thank you!

- boomdizzle

April 5, 2008 at 12:19am

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I read "Beat the Dealer" a long time ago. The best card counting method was maintaining the ratio of 10 cards to low valued cards. A deck rich in 10 cards favored the player. The uninformed probably presume that card counters must be able to recall every card in the deck. I'm not surprised that this movie is dull, because gambling is dull. Anybody who has spent a few hours at a blackjack table can verify this. Profession gambler is a duller job than assembly line worker.

- John

April 6, 2008 at 10:36am

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I'm glad that I didn't read your review of this movie before I saw it, because I would have passed it by. But, consider that the movie served as vicarious entertainment. The parts that I related to were, Boston,which was once my home town, youth, immaturity, friends waiting on the side lines, a one parent family, over confidence, and a desire to succeed.

- patricia cesarec

April 20, 2008 at 7:23pm

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