Catherine Zeta-Jones joins George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Andy Garcia and Bernie Mac, among others, in "Ocean's Twelve," Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the names involved are enough to make any mouth water. Unfortunately, as with most sequels, "Ocean's Twelve" does not live up to the original in any way or form, but it still makes for an entertaining couple of hours.

The direction is fun. The cast is good. There's no arguing that. However, the story needs work. A lot of thought was put into the plot and in essence, it's pretty good, but in the end, the plot is convoluted, confusing, at times impossible and ultimately a little flat. Terry Benedict (Garcia) has discovered that Danny Ocean (Clooney) and his crew are indeed responsible for the clever heist pulled off in the original. Put on a two week time limit, the gang is forced to pull off another heist to pay him back, with interest. Furthermore, Europe's most celebrated thief, the Nightfox, is jealous of the attention Ocean's 11 are receiving and sets out to bring them down.

The plot is surprisingly complicated as our thieves attempt to payback Benedict, beat out the Nightfox and avoid Interpol. In a heist movie, this is typically pretty good, but "Ocean's Twelve" is filled with coincidental relationships and, at times, ludicrously unreasonable gimmicks. To steal a priceless Faberge egg, they hire a guy to design a holographic image of the egg - in only a matter of days. Is this even possible? I don't know, but it seemed strange. And then there's the whole dance sequence where the Nightfox eludes the moving laser beams... and a few other things along that line.

More than anything else, the heist itself seems lackluster. Most sequels strive for bigger and better things (and usually fail), but the heist here pales in comparison to the casino job in the original film. In fact, it's downright boring, and the way they pull it off is way too simple. It really doesn't make much sense.

Nevertheless, "Ocean's Twelve" does feature the same laid back comedy from the original. It isn't nearly as funny nor witty as the first one, but still has a fair amount of laughs, a lot of which revolve around a huge cameo by Bruce Willis and a sequence where Julia Roberts, as Tess Ocean, pretends to be... Julia Roberts.

"Ocean's Twelve" is a fun heist film, but a rather disappointing sequel that doesn't end with nearly the bang the original had. It's not as smart, not as exciting and not as funny as "Ocean's Eleven," but, I guess, that's how sequels go.

Review by Erik Samdahl.