Film reviews: Ocean's 8, Overboard and Freak Show

It wasn’t as clever as George Clooney’s all-male Ocean’s Eleven (obviously) but I thought the cast and writer-director Gary Ross did enough to freshen a stale franchise.

In fact, until those oppressed A-listers spoke out, I hadn’t even noticed it was made for a specific age-group, race or gender.

The opening act seems to set it up nicely as a breezy crime caper aimed at the broadest of audiences. Bullock plays con artist Debbie Ocean – the younger sister of Clooney’s possibly dead Danny – who has been behind bars for precisely five years, eight months and 12 days.

Debbie tells the parole board she is a reformed character who wants a “simple life”. But as soon as she is out of the door she is hustling a suite in a plush hotel and pricey cosmetics from a fancy store.

It turns out, this is just her giving her criminal brain a quick workout. Her eye is on a much bigger prize – a $150million Cartier necklace.

She plans to steal it and the first part of her plan is to get it around the neck of preening actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway) as she hosts the glitzy Metropolitan Museum gala. So she recruits fashion designer Rose (Helena Bonham Carter) and a crew of hardened criminals.

The “getting the gang together” bit introduces us to Debbie’s former partner Lou (Blanchett), jeweller Amita (Kaling), hacker Nine Ball (Rihanna), fence Tammy (Sarah Paulson), designer Rose and pick-pocket Constance (rapper Awkwafina).

The heist involves lots of quirky details, like a spiked bowl of soup and a switcheroo in a toilet cubicle.

It’s fun but I don’t think the mixed reviews are purely down to gender bias. Great con movies keep the preposterous twists stacking up. Here, it feels a bit one-paced.

Ross also plays it too safe with his characters. Hathaway and Bonham Carter make the most of larger-than-life roles but the rest of the crew is dangerously short on personality.

He also devotes a lot of time to the aftermath, where an English insurance inspector has to retrieve the necklace.

His script seems to be crying out for the dry delivery of a veteran character actor. I would have gone for Bill Nighy or Jim Broadbent but Ross has plumped for flavour of the month (on US TV at least) James Corden.

Perhaps, this is just my “prism of misunderstanding” and women are desperate to see Corden bring his cheeky British scamp routine to the big screen.

If I genuinely believed that, I really would be a sexist dinosaur. To be honest, I’ve found too many Hollywood films aimed specifically at women to be both lazy and patronising.

Bridesmaids, a hit with all genders, had an all-female cast but none of its stars were tasked with playing the ditzy kook who is desperate to be swept off her feet by a dashing millionaire.

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Overboard 3/5 

The 1987 rom-com Overboard has been accumulating new audiences on DVD and download and I think that is partly down to the way it subverts those condescending rom-com clichés.

The new remake updates the premise again by doing the trendy thing of flipping the genders.

Goldie Hawn’s vile millionaire is now played by Mexico’s biggest star Eugenio Derbez, who delivers a good percentage of his lines in subtitled Spanish.

Anna Faris slips into Kurt Russell’s battered work boots to plays Kate, a hard-working trainee nurse and mother-of-three who clashes with the spoilt rich kid when left to mop up his yacht after a raucous night in with a gaggle of models.

When Leonardo (Derbez) goes overboard and suffers amnesia shortly after getting Kate fired, she hits on a way to pay him back. She’ll trick “Leo” into thinking he’s her husband, get him a back-breaking job with less well-heeled Mexicans at a building site and force him to run the house while she studies for an exam.

Credulity is definitely strained but the performances are lively and the political angle (racial and class divides are rarely as prevalent in a rom-com) gives it a topical edge.

I just wish the jokes had been a little funnier and Faris and Derbez had a fraction of the chemistry of the still-together in real life Russell and Hawn.

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Freak Show 2/5

Freak Show, the well-meaning debut from director Trudie Styler, is definitely not aimed at this particular film reviewer. But if you’re a gay teenager who is getting bullied at school I imagine you might find some comfort in this inspirational coming-of-age drama.

Alex Lawther impresses as Billy Bloom, a waspish, cross-dressing, rich boy who refuses to bow down to playground thugs.

“I didn’t choose to be fabulous,” he announces. “Fabulous chose me.”

Styler’s film is pretty fabulous too.

The costumes are eye-popping, the cinematography (from Michael Mann collaborator Dante Spinotti) is gorgeous and supporting roles are filled by Bette Midler, Laverne Cox and John McEnroe.

Sadly, she is so obsessed with the glitter and the glamour, she forgets to craft a convincing story. Billy is ridiculously intelligent, astonishingly confident and an unbelievably accomplished designer of self-made costumes.

His outrageous ensembles, which Styler insists on revealing in slow-motion, become so elaborate they begin to look like they were created by a team of costume designers rather than a teenage boy.

Which is only part of the problem. No one talks or behaves remotely like a real teenager either.

Billy’s nemesis is a Bible-thumping, Trump-quoting homophobe (Abigail Breslin) and his instantly devoted best friend Flip (Ian Nelson) is a ridiculously handsome, entirely straight, school quarterback who dreams of being the new Jackson Pollock.

Unlike Flip’s artistic idol, Styler paints with the broadest of strokes.