The Argument: Rather than repeating themselves by having another casino heist, in Ocean's Twelve Danny Ocean and his team went on a trip of Europe that saw them going through a series of silly and playful adventures. It wasn't popular, with Thirteen going back to the original conceit, but some (director Steven Soderbergh included, who calls this his favourite in the series) would argue it's only poorly regarded because people didn't go in expecting what they got; the first film may have been light, but this one was a flat-out comedy caper. Watch it like that and it's much better. Why It Doesn't Work: Not only is the film being a caper not a reason it should be defended, it really isn't the reason to hate it either. Soderbergh and co. tried something different and that's fair enough, but focusing on that misses that Ocean's Twelve real problem is with its execution. It's OK for a film to be silly, but it needs to be silly within its own rules (see The LEGO Movie). Here we have Vincent Cassel stealing a Fabergé egg in a manner the film directly stated as impossible, while the entire second act is built on the fact that Julia Roberts' character looks like Julia Roberts.
