← Back to Reviews
in
"God help you if you use voiceover in your work, my friends. God help you!"
These are the words of the maybe-possibly fictionalized version of Robert McKee in Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. The McKee character is giving a seminar on screen writing and angrily explains that "any idiot can write a voiceover narration to explain the thoughts of a character." Well, any idiot did.
There really isn't any way to critique this film with the kind of wordplay and wit that would make skewering it enjoyable. It is, simply put, badly written. Not so much in that it says or does anything particularly stupid, but more in that it asks us to believe a series of improbable things for no particular reason. It is "based" on a true story, but only in the way McDonald's is "based" in Oak Brook, Illinois. In reality, both are all over the place.
It opens with a head-scratching bit of narration from Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess). Ben's sitting at a Blackjack table, and in the narration is droning on about the phrase "winner winner, chicken dinner." This has nothing to do with what happens later in the film, and acts as little more than an excuse to show us cards being dealt with CGI. Yes, the same amazing technology that brought dinosaurs to life in Jurassic Park now proudly presents...the three of clubs!
From there, we learn that Ben (who's a student at MIT) is applying for a scholarship so that he can attend Harvard Medical School. His academic record is flawless, but plenty of others can match it in the pursuit of such a massive grant, and he's told he needs something to set his application apart from the others. After acquitting himself well in class, he's approached by Professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) about joining a card-counting team made up of other MIT students.
Ben is skeptical, and initially refuses. He eventually caves, though the film ridiculously asks us to believe it's so that he can pay for school. He says he needs $300,000, though nobody points out to him that there are plenty of other scholarships around, and with his record it's inconceivable that he'd have to pay for most of it. 21 shows us a man of infinite promise, and then tries to paint him into a corner that simply wouldn't exist for him in reality.
Unfortunately, these sorts of details keep tripping the film up. After Ben joins the team and starts earning stacks of cash, he inexplicably chooses to keep his money above the styrofoam paneling in his dorm room...amidst a good deal of wiring, to boot. These are the sorts of things that just don't happen in real life. It is one thing to ask an audience to suspend disbelief from time to time to see something incredible; it is quite another to ask them to do so for something dull. Ben's character is established, and then immediately hollowed out as he's forced to do things he'd probably never do to keep the film moving.
Of course, it's only a matter of time before the students have a falling out of some sort, one of many predictable contrivances. At every turn, 21 is intent on dumbing-down or outright burying its inherently interesting premise, choosing whenever possible to swap in tensionless conflict and even a chase scene. This story is screaming for a somber, tense, cerebral depiction. Instead, we get a boilerplate film with Blackjack as a backdrop. After the 14th "hit me," I was saying it, too.
Normally at this point in the review I would talk about the performances of the actors involved. Unfortunately, there's not really any way to gauge their performances, because they are constantly overshadowed by the inanity of the things they are asked to say and do. They can only be judged by how enthusiastic they are in the selling of their poor wares, and by that measure the cast is quite good. Either that, or none of them realize they're in a bad movie.
In the end, 21 is a prime example of the movie truth that characters need to ring true in the little ways to form any sort of connection with their audience. The aforementioned Adaptation devolved into a series of action-movie cliches during its dénouement, but it did so as a form of satire. 21 does the same ridiculous things, but it's completely serious about them.
These are the words of the maybe-possibly fictionalized version of Robert McKee in Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. The McKee character is giving a seminar on screen writing and angrily explains that "any idiot can write a voiceover narration to explain the thoughts of a character." Well, any idiot did.
There really isn't any way to critique this film with the kind of wordplay and wit that would make skewering it enjoyable. It is, simply put, badly written. Not so much in that it says or does anything particularly stupid, but more in that it asks us to believe a series of improbable things for no particular reason. It is "based" on a true story, but only in the way McDonald's is "based" in Oak Brook, Illinois. In reality, both are all over the place.
It opens with a head-scratching bit of narration from Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess). Ben's sitting at a Blackjack table, and in the narration is droning on about the phrase "winner winner, chicken dinner." This has nothing to do with what happens later in the film, and acts as little more than an excuse to show us cards being dealt with CGI. Yes, the same amazing technology that brought dinosaurs to life in Jurassic Park now proudly presents...the three of clubs!
From there, we learn that Ben (who's a student at MIT) is applying for a scholarship so that he can attend Harvard Medical School. His academic record is flawless, but plenty of others can match it in the pursuit of such a massive grant, and he's told he needs something to set his application apart from the others. After acquitting himself well in class, he's approached by Professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) about joining a card-counting team made up of other MIT students.
Ben is skeptical, and initially refuses. He eventually caves, though the film ridiculously asks us to believe it's so that he can pay for school. He says he needs $300,000, though nobody points out to him that there are plenty of other scholarships around, and with his record it's inconceivable that he'd have to pay for most of it. 21 shows us a man of infinite promise, and then tries to paint him into a corner that simply wouldn't exist for him in reality.
Unfortunately, these sorts of details keep tripping the film up. After Ben joins the team and starts earning stacks of cash, he inexplicably chooses to keep his money above the styrofoam paneling in his dorm room...amidst a good deal of wiring, to boot. These are the sorts of things that just don't happen in real life. It is one thing to ask an audience to suspend disbelief from time to time to see something incredible; it is quite another to ask them to do so for something dull. Ben's character is established, and then immediately hollowed out as he's forced to do things he'd probably never do to keep the film moving.
Of course, it's only a matter of time before the students have a falling out of some sort, one of many predictable contrivances. At every turn, 21 is intent on dumbing-down or outright burying its inherently interesting premise, choosing whenever possible to swap in tensionless conflict and even a chase scene. This story is screaming for a somber, tense, cerebral depiction. Instead, we get a boilerplate film with Blackjack as a backdrop. After the 14th "hit me," I was saying it, too.
Normally at this point in the review I would talk about the performances of the actors involved. Unfortunately, there's not really any way to gauge their performances, because they are constantly overshadowed by the inanity of the things they are asked to say and do. They can only be judged by how enthusiastic they are in the selling of their poor wares, and by that measure the cast is quite good. Either that, or none of them realize they're in a bad movie.
In the end, 21 is a prime example of the movie truth that characters need to ring true in the little ways to form any sort of connection with their audience. The aforementioned Adaptation devolved into a series of action-movie cliches during its dénouement, but it did so as a form of satire. 21 does the same ridiculous things, but it's completely serious about them.