21 = 0

I haven't run into a movie this eager to please in a long time.  It's so MTV stylized and viewer friendly, virtually no harm can come to any of its characters even when Laurence Fishburne is punching them in the face.  The worst that could happen is that the main character doesn't get to attend Harvard for his doctorate and will have to settle for M.I.T. instead.  Boo hoo.

Jim Sturgess, the current it-boy for that cute (read: irritating) British accent and the concurrent flop of greasy hair, stars as Ben Campbell, a poor boy from a working class family with a 4.0 GPA, a 1590 SAT score, and apparently a lack of knowledge of such things as grants, scholarships, and fellowships, who is finding it unlikely that he will be able to attend Harvard (with its $300,000 price tag) the next year when he's making $8.00 an hour at a haberdashery.

Enter Kevin Spacey as a math professor who enlists his brightest students to run a blackjack card-counting scam in Vegas on the weekends.  No sooner does Sturgess mention his plight than he's invited to the club.  As usual, per a thousand other films just like this, he declines the offer so there can be that requisite scene or two where he watches the sun set or has dinner with his mother before deciding to take a chance and use his talents for less-than-honorable ends.

As per any film where a group of people need to be introduced, there's always the scene at the diner where everyone shakes hands, and there's always a cute girl in the bunch that the boy was pining after in the opening scenes of the film.  Here, that girl is played by Kate Bosworth, who, like Mila Kunis and David Bowie, has two different colored eyes.  I had to mention that.  The other members of the group are a beautiful Asian girl named Kianna, an annoying Asian guy named Choi (who, for no discernible reason, is a kleptomaniac), and Fisher, a character you know from the outset will be usurped by Ben if for no other reason than he is also Caucasian.

Let's get these kids to Vegas.  Their plan goes off without a hitch their first night out, and before too long, Ben is stuffing great big gobs of money under the ceiling tile of his dorm room.  Apparently he hasn't heard of a thing called a safety deposit box, either.  There are scenes, as are required of all Vegas movies, where characters lounge on beds and throw money up in the air, and scenes where they go shopping for handbags and slinky dresses - usually lipstick red or in a shimmering gold - while the narrator (in this case, Ben) talks about how they made too much money too fast, and didn't know what to do with it, and it went to their heads and warped their emotions, blah, blah, blah.

Can you guess what happens next?  I can.

You see, Ben is only in it for that $300,000 he needs for Harvard.  But when he gets that money, do you think he stops there?  Think maybe he loses it all?  Think maybe he wins it all back?  Think he gets the girl?  That Laurence Fishburne, who starts off as a bad guy, becomes a good guy?  That Kevin Spacey, who starts off a good guy, becomes a bad guy?  Think, I don't know, that a life lesson is learned that you shouldn't worry too much about money, and instead count on your intelligence and your friends to get you through?

Think there's a shot at the end of the movie where all the characters are walking through the casino all Michael Bay style while some hip hop song booms over the soundtrack?

This film is entirely composed of scenes that are required of it.  It did not require any imagination or any risk on the parts of the individuals involved in creating it.

And it doesn't know anything about gambling.  I didn't learn anything from it.  It doesn't get into the character's heads to explain how they're counting cards or how the pressure gets to them or if there's any pressure at all.  It's way too busy zig-zagging around at fifty cuts a second like some half-breed Tony Scott film, or dissolving to montage sequences of the kids having drinks, talking to hot singles, going to strip clubs, spending their money - all the while more of that narration spews out of Ben's mouth.

After about forty minutes, I just wanted it to be over.  Slick movies like this that are devoid of any believability or chartable humanity, that act as commercial advertisements for Armani suits and the latest hair gel, that offer nothing more than pretty people looking in slow motion over their shoulders as other pretty people walk by, are Kleenex until the next Hard Eight or The Color of Money comes by.  I learned a real scam when I watched Hard Eight.  It doesn't work anymore, but if it did, you'd know how to do it from watching the movie.  And in The Color of Money, I could see how hustling could wear away at your facilities.  

All 21 made me want to do was wear a nice suit and not go to Vegas.