There’s no denying that Ocean’s Twelve was a let-down, and many wondered if the third, and what appears to be the last, film in the Ocean’s trilogy could reclaim the suave success of the first film.  As it turns out, it’s not quite as complete as Eleven, but Thirteen is still mostly a success and the first truly fun movie of the summer.

Ocean’s Thirteen
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Maybe there’s an unintentional message in release dates for all of the Oceans movies.  Parts Eleven and Twelve both opened early December as fully realized and completely separate heist films.  Now we find ourselves going to see Thirteen in the heat of June, and it makes perfect sense.  Ocean’s Thirteen isn’t quite its own film; but as an appendix to the series that’s fully loaded with great moments, it’s light and entertaining – just right for the dog days of summer.

As much fun as the film is, it does start off a couple of steps under.  With a pace that goes a tad too quickly for comfort, story elements slip by on occasion.  It feels like it’s just jumped into a boxing match and it’s scrambling while trying to find its footing.  Still, you pick up all the important elements to the story: after one of the gang is hurt by a Vegas hot-shot played by Al Pacino, those ragamuffins reunite to give him his just deserts.

Things start to work just as they should for an Oceans film: style is oozed out of every frame, slick but not over-the-top one-liners breeze out of the actors and a heist film somehow becomes more funny than most comedies.

Still, the film has trouble finding its footing in the ring.  Things are starting to make a little bit more sense, but side stories that aren’t required to understand are somewhat inaccessible.  It starts to become more and more apparent, however, that it doesn’t really matter.

Even though the film often has trouble finding a solid overall story to connect every scene, everything works out well enough, and on an individual basis, every scene is a riot of laughter with sets and direction dominated by enough design and style to fill the MoMA, thanks to the fact that director Steven Soderbergh is utterly incapable of delivering a visually uninteresting film.

It’s also a great return to the form of the first film.  After the second film lost its way in the franchise with some characters getting too much attention, and inversely some being forgotten, Thirteen is fixed by just treating the cast as an ensemble instead of giving its three most well known stars the three juiciest parts.  A side effect of this aspect is that there isn’t any real character development.  That might sound like a downer, but I think everyone would agree after seeing the film that it’s better to sacrifice the slightly meatier stories to fit in more laughs.  I mean, I much prefer seeing Brad Pitt‘s character losing the Catherine Zeta-Jones love interest if it just means we get the brilliant scene detailing the masculine appeal of Oprah. And enough can’t be said of the cast – though none ever have much drama around which to act, they exude a friendly coolness that, at the same time, is intimidating by reminding you how lame you are in contrast.

I mean, in all fairness, I don’t know that Ocean’s Thirteen is that amazing of a film in the traditional respect of having strong story and story-telling at its heart.  But just like all the tales you’ve heard about the actors having the times of their lives making the first two films, this movie more than any of the others is flat-out fun.  It’s not the place to start in the series – Ocean’s Eleven is still the strongest of the series – but in a summer full of the weighty and uneven Spider-Man, the over-bloated Pirates or the just plain Crappy Shrek movies, Ocean’s Thirteen is more worthy of being a summer movie than anything else out yet this season.