The Bank Job
Posted on March 6, 2008 at 6:00 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | Mature High Schooler |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for sexual content, nudity, violence and language. |
| Profanity: | Very strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, smoking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Peril and graphic violence, torture, murder, disturbing images, characters injured and killed |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | March 7, 2008 |
Ah, the pleasures of the heist film. Something for nothing. Sticking it to The Man. Tricky problems solved by clever people both in the planning stages and on the spot. And, just to make it really fun, sometimes, as here, it is based on a true story. Yes, as they say, now it can be told. Once upon a time back in 1970, when cameras, cops, bank security, and princesses were very different from what we get nowadays, the sister of the Queen of England was photographed in a compromising position by an enterprising gangster who used the photos to blackmail the government. The prints and film were tucked away in a safe deposit box at a bank frequented by somewhat shady types. And it seemed to MI-5, the British equivalent of the Secret Service, that the best way to clear up this spot of trouble was to rob the bank. Efficient and discreet as always, they dispatched one of their officers to find some criminals to do the job.
This off-beat and uneven fairy tale has something in common with its heroine — an uncertain incongruity. That heroine is Penelope (Christina Ricci), an educated, wealthy young woman with a loving heart and the nose of a pig. More of a snout, actually. While it is actually kind of cute, Penelope’s prospective suitors are so horrified by it that one after the other they leap out of her mansion through the window, wanting to get away so fast they do not have time to take the stairs and leave by the door.
Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) has been kicked out of so many posh prep schools that the only thing left to try is the local public school. At first, he shows up wearing his prep school blazer and carrying an attaché case, but he soon learns — around the time that a Mohawk-haired bully gives him a swirly — that this is not the way to fit in. And it only takes him a little bit longer to discover that he has what it takes to become truly popular: the willingness to listen to kids and the access to a wide range of prescription psychotropic drugs.
This pea-brained vanity production does not have the energy to remember from one scene to the next what it is about or why it is on screen. It is attention-deficit film-making. Famous-for-being-famous Paris Hilton is not only the star, but also the producer of the film, and it seems to have been entirely generated by whatever she thought would be fun to do in front of a camera, with no thought whatsoever to the misery it would inflict on those who might watch it.
“Family is a 24-7 reality check,” explains one of the parade of nightmare relatives. “This is one hell of a family,” says another. These two statements pretty much summarize the movie. And that’s the good news.