Yesterday evening I watched Ocean’s Eight and I thought it was great (within the context of fun heist-comedy films.) It is without a shadow of a doubt better than Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen, but not quite as polished as Ocean’s Eleven.
Sandra Bullock carried the film well. Blanchett as a tough, punk-rock chick; yes, please. Sarah Paulson was a delight. Rihanna had everything she needed to be the cool hacker. Awkwafina was perfectly quirky and I totally fell in love with her. Helena Bonham Carter as a troubled fashion designer was a great fit. And Anne Hathaway stole the show as the smart-than-she-looks socialite and film star who just wants to have friends.
The plot was perfectly ridiculous but immensely entertaining, and if I really haven’t find something to complain about, it’s that the magnet-lock subplot could have been a interesting narrative element, if it hadn’t be resolved twenty seconds later by asking someone’s little sister for a solution. Perhaps it was simply done to send the message that young, smart girls can be STEM-geniuses, but then still I would have loved to see that exposed more. (And I’m just going to ignore the giant “oh, the necklace must have fallen off my neck while I was running for the bathroom” plot-hole. Wasn’t it supposed to have a magnetic lock!?)
The recent trend of redoing a bro-film format (Ghostbusters, The Hangover, e.g.) with an all-female cast film (Ghostbusters, Rough Night, e.g.) hasn’t been faring very well. The all-female Ghostbusters was so awful even the amazing Kate McKinnon couldn’t save it. But this film made it work very well and in a way that felt like it wasn’t just a derivation of an already done format.
