Ocean’s Twelve is first sequel to one of the greatest heist movies ever made, Ocean’s Eleven. How does this movie fare?

I’m not going to beat around the bush on this one; this movie flops right from the start. There is a reason that it is universally panned. Whereas the original Ocean’s Eleven sets up a wonderful cast of con-men with the heist of the century. Ocean’s Twelve hardly uses any of its star-studded cast to rob an egg from a backpack (oh I should say spoilers, but let’s face it, there’s hardly a reason to watch this movie today). Now that we are in spoiler territory anyway, the twist of Ocean’s Twelve is that the heist was all an act anyway. The team wants to get caught. Brad Pitt even saying at one point during the planning of the heist, “by 10:45, we’re all in jail.” The twist is meant to be some awesome con to show that Danny Ocean is the brightest and best con-man in the world. But the reality is, it completely deflates the movie. There was absolutely no reason for the egg, the EuroPol agents, the pretend Julia Roberts (we’re going to talk about this in a second), or even for introducing Matt Damon’s mother at the very end. The con was on François Toulour (a rival thief) the whole time. There was no point for almost all of it. Especially since the Europol inexplicably gives up her chase and starts dating Brad Pitt for the last 30 minutes of the movie.

Now for the best part: there is a part where Julia Roberts, playing Beatrice Ocean, pretends to be… Julia Roberts. They use this as a way to have a famous person get next to the egg. Julia Roberts is playing a character pretending to be Julia Roberts. They even have an entire montage of teaching her how to talk like herself. Which doesn’t change anything because she is not even doing an accent in the movie. It is so bizarre. This only gets weirder when Bruce Willis, playing himself, comes to hang out with the fake Julia Roberts. Bruce Willis plays a less convincing Bruce Willis than Julia Roberts plays a character playing Julia Roberts. It’s just all so bizarre. These characters live in a world where Beatrice Ocean looks just like Julia Roberts, an actress that lives in their world. But Matt Damon’s character never gets told he looks strikingly like Matt Damon. Or any of the other characters played by these mega famous actors. It’s just weird and really makes the film lose its back half even more.

Which, as I said earlier, DOES NOT MATTER! All of this weird inception-esque stuff happening with actors playing characters playing actors stuff doesn’t matter at all. Because the heist is done off-screen, before we even start any of the planning for the pretend heist. The actual heist happens about 20 minutes into the film, and nothing else matters.

That’s the main thing about Ocean’s Twelve is that the movie doesn’t matter. The main drive of the movie (the Ocean’s crew paying back their debt) almost is forgotten by minute 40. None of it matters. They introduce two antagonists and one starts dating Brad Pitt and the other is duped before he is even introduced. It’s just pointless.

I don’t really have anything else to say about this movie. The set up is the only interesting part and it is so confusing that you end up ignoring it anyway. The characters are not utilized hardly at all and the heist doesn’t even pay off in the end. Maybe Ocean’s Twelve is just a long-con on us viewers? They used so many zoom-ins on this movie that I hope they can see my disappointment from wherever Steven Soderbergh is. Or maybe this movie was just made by a character, played by Steven Soderbergh, pretending to be Steven Soderbergh? Either way, Ocean’s Twelve gets a 1 out of 4.