Though I had never seen the "original" OCEAN'S ELEVEN, I was well aware of it. Word on the street was that it was a bit of a lark and had the feeling of being a film that was made for fun by a bunch of big movie stars who wanted to hang out in Vegas. Watching it a couple weeks ago on Reel 13, I had no idea that it would be as sloppy or unsophisticated as it turned out to be.
I knew I was in trouble from the very beginning with the obnoxiously slow and annoying title sequence. Animated title sequences, particularly for comedies, were in vogue in the sixties, so that wasn't the issue as much as it was that there was nothing interesting or imaginative about the sequence. Counting up to 11 took forever and the music chosen wasn't engaging enough to make it worthwhile.
After that, the film is all over the place. It seems to me there were more inside jokes than there were actual jokes, which is pretty infuriating. The result is several scenes seem to ramble (Why do Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin take ten minutes to discuss what they would do if they were president? What does that have to do with the price of tea in Vegas?), which interrupts the momentum of the narrative. After all, this is supposed to be a crime caper - the first meeting of the eleven doesn't even happen until fifty minutes into the film. And the caper itself isn't clever enough to make the waiting worthwhile. As a group, they face very little obstacles in pulling off their heist (as opposed to the far superior, exciting and fun remake by Soderbergh) and then to top it all off, the ending is so anti-climactic, that you want to throw something at the screen for wasting your time.
Director Lewis Milestone doesn't help the matter either. Floating balloons hiding cuts? Cameos? Really? Additionally, the blocking is pretty lame and wooden. Nearly every joke (what was with the running gags regarding the Russian mastermind guy?) falls flat. The sets look weirdly unrealistic and the swinging music gets to be really irritating after awhile, largely due to the constant repetition of the same chords over and over again without any variation. Overall, in spite of its star power, the film plays like a TV movie. No wonder that Soderbergh wanted to remake it. The plot has potential that Milestone, Sinatra, et al all seem to ignore. It is easily the worst film we have seen so far this year on Reel 13 Classics.