I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

This film was disappointing in every way. Predictable, underwhelming, and unsatisfying. I completely regret seeing this film.

If I watch a movie based on a book, I prefer to see it before reading. Here's a movie I watched after reading Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House, and I wish it was vice-versa. The book was compelling but the movie was sort of okay, and I guess it tried to be a piece of art on its own.Much has been made about the "whitewashing" of the cast, as some of the real life college students in Ben's book are of Chinese descent. The accusations of whitewashing are fair enough, and it's a shame the cast wasn't more reflective of the real life characters. But hey, Hollywood is unfortunately replete with such whitewashing type examples. Valkyrie I don't think had any Germans in the cast. It was pretty much Americans and Brits playing Germans. The director wasn't German! Also in Schindler's List, same deal, no Germans in the lead roles. Similarly, Hogan's Heroes didn't have any Germans in the cast - in fact quite ironically some of the Nazis were played by Jewish actors. Also in in 'Allo 'Allo, no Germans were featured - all Brits played the Germans. Nary a German actor in Raiders of the Lost Ark. So unfortunately Germans are being whitewashed out of casting roles sadly.

21 is predictable and has clouded motivations on what we are hearing this story.Despite a few performances the acting is dull and wooden. The characters are not fleshed out except for our leading actor who had the strongest performance, even though his performance was still not that strong. The script is messy and predictable. Once Kevin Spacey's character is invited back to play in Vegas again you know what is going to happen for the last half hour of the movie. The opening and closing scenes are probably the worst thing this movie has going for it. It opens up that this college student wants to get a scholarship to Harvard because he can't afford the tuition and he has to write an essay about a life experience that would make the school want to give him this scholarship. So he decides to tell the school about how he went to Vegas and became a criminal and got his teacher at MIT beat up by the casino security. Then in the closing scene he makes all of these comments like: "Does that impress you?" or "Did that make you go 'wow'?" The other part about the script that bothered me was how they kept going back to the same casino even though they knew security was watching them and knew who they were. For the dialogue, there is some really cheesy romantic dialogue that doesn't work. Also some scenes are supposed to funny and they really are not. This movie was very disappointing please don't watch it. Save yourself the pain.

21. It is the fact-based story about six MIT students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings. First lack of money drives characters to do something insane and then abundance of money make them insane. Genius and selfish Professor Mickey played by master actor Kevin Spacey and simple sober smart student played by Jim Sturgess both are the strength of the movie. Supporting actors also do OK. Movie aimed at youthful emotions in an easy ride never getting dark or overly emotional. The big guy Laurence Fishburne playing the spoiler in the otherwise a foolproof plan makes his character quite enjoyable. I am going with strong 7 out of 10 for 21. If you want to enjoy an easy ride which does require your mind to read the game then 21 is right one.