Ocean’s 8 Cert: 12A 1hr 50mins
Just like Hannibal Smith in The A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together. But if I’m absolutely honest, there’s also a certain pleasure in watching a plan fall apart too.
Which is exactly what happens with Ocean’s 8, the fourth instalment of the glossy and hugely popular caper franchise and the first to feature an all-female leading cast.
I mean, this is a film that just had so much going for it, beginning, of course, with perfect timing. What could be better for these #MeToo times than a feisty all-female cast. And an absolutely top-notch all-female cast at that – Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway… that’s three Oscar- winners for starters, backed up by the classy/popular likes of Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna and Mindy Kaling.
From left: Sandra Bullock, Sarah Paulson, Rihanna, Cate Blanchett and Awkwafina. What could be better for these #MeToo times than a feisty all-female cast?
Yes, it’s a slight shame it’s directed and co-written by a man, Gary Ross, but he’s made some nice films along the way – Pleasantville, Seabiscuit, the first Hunger Games. Surely he couldn’t have made a mess of this. Could he?
Well, someone has. Because for all the glitz of its cast and the glamour of New York’s annual Met Gala, Ocean’s 8 is a film that struggles to make it out of first gear. None of the three principals – Bullock, Blanchett and Hathaway – really turns up, with Bullock opting for a laid-back, super-cool performance that may not be actively bad but is certainly wrong, while Hathaway just gives one of the dullest performances of her, until now, ever-more-impressive career. Mind you, it’s a terrible part. As for Blanchett, her trashy blonde bob is more memorable than anything she actually says or does.
None of the three principals – Bullock, Blanchett (both above) and Hathaway – really turns up, with Bullock opting for a performance that may not be actively bad but is certainly wrong
Bullock’s part, by contrast, should be a nice one; after all, she’s playing Debbie Ocean, sister of the now apparently late Danny, the pivotal figure played by George Clooney in all three previous Ocean’s films. Bullock is a big star and can certainly carry a film, as the likes of The Heat, Miss Congeniality and many others have shown, but here she distinctly underplays it, as Debbie emerges from jail armed only with a conwoman’s cunning and an audacious plan.
She’s going to steal a spectacular piece of diamond jewellery from the star-studded fashion fundraiser, the Met Gala. But first, of course, she’s going to need a gang.
Which is where nightclub owner Lou (Blanchett), near-bankrupt fashion designer Rose (Bonham Carter) and ace computer hacker ‘Nine Ball’ (Rihanna) come in, along with four lesser others and our first indication of the general level of humour we can expect.
‘What’s your real name?’ barks Debbie. ‘Eight Ball,’ comes the reply.
Oh dear. Don Cheadle’s cockney accent was funnier than that.
Above: Rihanna as ‘Nine Ball’. Whilst Ocean’s 8 looks doomed there is some fun to be had as the plan finally plays out
Apart from duff performances, there’s an extraordinary lack of tension in what ensues. Debbie says she’s been planning the ambitious heist for years and has ‘run it’ in her head a thousand times, so much so that now, pretty much whatever happens, they don’t get caught.
Disappointingly, in terms of tension levels, she seems to be right. Whatever obstacles do emerge – and genre convention dictates they must – are effortlessly overcome, often within seconds. The massive diamonds – worth more than $100 million – draped around the pretty neck of socialite and Met Gala regular Daphne Kluger (Hathaway) look doomed.
But so is Ocean’s 8. Yes, there is some fun to be had as the plan finally plays out, real-life celebrities such as Anna Wintour make fleeting appearances, and Ross and co-writer Olivia Milch belatedly start to deliver one or two decent lines.
Sarah Paulson, perhaps the least well known of the ‘eight’, does her career no harm at all as Tammy, suburban mother and underworld fence. But even as the end approaches, strange things start to happen, collectively smacking of a film that has had a difficult time in the run-up to release.
Above: James Corden and Richard Armitage. Even for an avowed Bullock, Blanchett and Hathaway fan like me, it has to go down as one of the disappointments of the summer
Matt Damon’s much-vaunted cameo never materialises, meaning the only franchise regulars to make fleeting appearances are the peripheral figures of Reuben (Elliott Gould) and the acrobatic Yen. Which surely isn’t quite what we were hoping for.
Throw in a bizarre late appearance by James Corden as a Thomas Crown-style insurance investigator, a clunky and distinctly uninvolving revenge subplot involving hunky Richard Armitage, and a couple of stonking late plot twists that border on the ridiculous, and you have a film that, even for an avowed Bullock, Blanchett and Hathaway fan like me, has to go down as one of the disappointments of the summer. Shame.
Second Screen
The Happy Prince (15)
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Hereditary (15)
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Studio 54 (15)
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A generation of once young, once beautiful male actors is growing old, and while one or two may have fallen by the wayside, others are embracing middle age and the opportunities it offers with a renewed vigour. Hugh Grant has never been better, Colin Firth is an Oscar-winner, and now Rupert Everett has made the film of his career. The Happy Prince is a heartbreaking gem.
This is the story of Oscar Wilde after he was released from prison in 1897, having served a two-year sentence for homosexual offences.
Ostracised, stigmatised, flat broke and with his looks long gone, Wilde (played superbly by Everett, who also directs and writes) cuts a pathetic figure in fin-de-siècle France. He’s still obsessed with Lord Alfred Douglas – or Bosie, as he calls the vain young lover at least partially responsible for his downfall – and is totally dependent on the goodwill of a small handful of remaining friends, including the journalist and critic Robbie Ross (Edwin Thomas) and writer Reggie Turner (Firth).
Above: Rupert Everett and Colin Morgan. Everett has wrung every last penny out of a modest budget to evoke an enjoyably convincing sense of period and place
There’s so much to admire here. Everett has wrung every last penny out of a modest budget to evoke an enjoyably convincing sense of period and place. I love that Wilde spends much of the film speaking fluent French with a British accent and, be warned, Everett’s approach to the indignities of dying are similarly uncompromising but wholly admirable too.
But it works on another, almost Proustian level. The sudden appearance of Firth – a firm friend since they both appeared in The Importance Of Being Earnest in 2002 – in the sort of supporting role he ordinarily wouldn’t look twice at is immensely touching; doubly so once you discover it was Firth’s presence alone that got the film financed.
For while this may be a film about how Wilde’s life – and genius – were cruelly curtailed by the stigma of his homosexuality, it’s also about lives lived, enduring friendships and the relentless passing of time.
Hereditary, which I caught up with at the recent Sundance London Film Festival, arrives in cinemas with a lot of horror heat behind it. Could it do for the genre, as some have claimed, what the likes of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity once did? Short answer – no, as the sighs of disappointment around me, greeting the closing credits, made clear.
As a child of the disco era, I absolutely loved Studio 54, a fascinating and rather moving documentary about the short-lived New York nightclub that briefly became the epitome of glamorous hedonism at the end of the Seventies. The story is both better and worse than I was expecting, but if I ever stumble across a time machine, that’s still where I’m heading first.