PRINTMovie Review: 21
April 3, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
For those who don’t have more than one definition of limits, math is generally not considered fun. So it’s pretty obvious 21’s creators did not consider how profoundly bad an idea it is to make a movie about the act of counting.
After being recruited by professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) and hot mathlete Jill (Kate Bosworth), Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) joins a team of hotshot card-counters with plans to take the Vegas blackjack tables for all they’re worth. Claiming to be based on a true story, the movie then charts Ben’s transformation from a goody-two-shoes, mumbling dork to a stuck-up, mumbling dick.
This is the type of movie so dumb its supposedly brilliant protagonist doesn’t realize hiding $300,000 cash in his dorm room is a bad idea. It’s the type of movie so unabashedly unoriginal that the camera trails off in the midst of a make-out session in order to dwell romantically on fountains shooting off in the background. It’s the type of movie so cowardly and ignorant that it turns Campbell’s real-life counterpart from an Asian man to a white one to appeal to mainstream audiences. And it doesn’t stop there; not only are the two remaining Asian team members denied the marginally interesting parts of love interest or rival, but their characterization is limited to making one a kleptomaniac.
This is not a movie worried about committing egregious assaults against reality, and you don’t need to be familiar with how the actual events transpired to have an inkling of that. After recklessly disregarding the boundaries of believability for an hour and a half, the movie goes off the tracks entirely when Spacey’s villain sports a bewildering Southern accent and a goatee (the likes of which haven’t been seen since the ’60s) in order to deflect attention.
Any time not taken up by counting is dedicated to an undercooked romance and, more surprisingly, shopping sprees — a throwback to director Robert Leketic’s Legally Blonde, perhaps? At any rate, 21 is a lucky title. Not only is it the number its collegiate high-rollers aspire to get in their blackjack games, but, incidentally, it’s also the age you have to be to purchase the substance that will render the movie remotely watchable.
Vox Rating:
