It’s make-or-break time for Jim Sturgess. The star of last year’s Beatles-themed musical “Across the Universe” mopped and sang his way into the hearts of women everywhere, even if he wasn’t quite as popular with critics. Doing his best to prove that he’s more than a stellar voice and a pretty face, Sturgess makes his first headlining role since “Universe” in “21,” hoping to walk away as a bona fide star.
Sturgess stars as Ben Campbell, a young man who the trailer claims is, “the most gifted student at M.I.T.” Unfortunately for him, intellectual gifts do not directly translate into what he needs: $300,000 to attend grad school. They do, however, attract the attention of professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey), who invites Campbell to join a very exclusive after-school club; one dedicated to learning the art of counting cards with the goal of making big money in Vegas. After his initial reluctance, Ben is won over by his mounting financial woes and the attention of sexpot Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth), the dream-girl that Ben and his best buddies have been drooling over for as long as they can remember.
From here, it’s all of the hip tunes, quick edits, and PG-13 sexual implications that you would expect from a movie of this type. Gambling and the high life are glorified in the way that we all want to see; it’s nearly impossible to get through the whole thing without leaning over to the person next to you and saying, “man, that would be awesome.” The film offers next to nothing that comes as any sort of surprise, opting to move swiftly and engagingly along paths we’ve all been down hundreds of times before.
Easily the low-point of the flick is its screenplay, which suffers from a tendency to contradict itself. At one point, Rosa describes Ben as “always keeping calm under pressure,” a compliment that Ben proceeds to prove wrong for the rest of the film’s runtime. Ben also spends all of his pre-Blackjack days with his two best friends, Miles and Cam (Josh Gad and Sam Golzari, respectively), a pair whose level of social anxiety and unattractiveness makes Ben’s good looks seem completely out of place. Such errors of continuity and logic are pervasive, but they rarely affect the actual plot of the movie; they’re more like slivers than stab wounds.
Sturgess and Bosworth have reasonably good chemistry, though Bosworth isn’t given much to do besides be a bombshell. And though Sturgess proves likable and easy to watch, he might have been wiser to not try to match up to Spacey, who outdoes him and the rest of the cast in scene after scene. Casino security thug Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne) also has little trouble stealing scenes from those to whom the movie’s top billings were given. Though they look capable when they’re acting with each other, all of the youngsters look completely over their heads when the adults come out to play.
On the level of gambling escapism, “21” falls well short of something like “Ocean’s 11,” but it’s perhaps on the level of that film’s two sequels. It’s hard to imagine anyone other than the most easily enamored falling in love with it, but it’s equally inconceivable that the average person wouldn’t find some pleasure in it. Quick moving and monumentally forgettable, “21” is shallow fun, but fun nonetheless.