Not Having Fun at "21"

"We're MIT students, we swear!"

You come in wanting to spice up your weekend a little bit and have something to talk about on Monday. Sure, you could probably do something more noble and character-building with your night, but hey, everyone told you it would be fun. After spending some time in that dark room with the sparkling lights, though, you realize the whole thing is just stupid, and suddenly, it’s not so fun any more.

The moviegoer and Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess), the star of “21,” share this experience of crushed thrill-seeking. Ben is a star student at MIT who can’t afford to pay for Harvard medical school, and whose life is too boring to write a good enough essay to receive a scholarship (the first sign the viewer gets that 123 minutes might be too long to spend with Ben Campbell). He feels too guilty to accept tuition money from his cocktail waitress mother, so, naturally, he joins an underground gambling ring run by his math professor, Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey). All too predictably, Ben rises to the top, only to have his greed bring him back down. Along the way, he makes out with Kate Bosworth, who plays fellow math genius blackjack gambler Jill Taylor (yeah right), betrays his real friends, and learns some nice life lessons about greed and being true to yourself.

It would be foolish to expect a masterpiece from a movie whose preview proudly features the line, “in Vegas, you can be anyone you want to be.” But “21” is less than “not quite a masterpiece.” It’s not even fun. The twists and turns are few and far between, and when they appear, they can be spotted from miles away. The movie relies on the viewer to go far beyond suspending disbelief; there are crucial premises of the movie that just don’t make sense. The absurdly racially balanced gambling ring is divided into “big players,” who do the high betting and money making, and “spotters,” who signal the big players with goofy hand gestures when the table’s “hot.” Ben’s hubristic rise begin when Mickey casts him and the group’s other white male as the “big players,” despite Ben’s lack of experience. Why can’t the Asian guy or one of the girls be big players? And why can’t Ben take out a loan to apply for med school? Why does Jill suddenly give Ben a lap dance after rejecting his advances just a few scenes earlier? And why should the audience care about this dull, greedy math geek? It’s hard to buy a movie about geniuses when the script is so dumb. With its stale plot, contrived acting, and underdeveloped characters, “21” is a bust.