21

It's all preposterous nonsense, but it's enthralling preposterous nonsense, even for this viewer who doesn't gamble and hates math. That's playing your cards right.

Director Robert Luketic has crammed all the ingredients of a hit into his lickety-split movie.

It is a fun and exhilarating ride with predictable twists, but great visuals and a solid young cast answering to ringleader Kevin Spacey help 21 deal out a good story.

21 makes for some slick escapist fantasy. Even if, and because, the fantasy has its roots in something real.

Director Robert Luketic provides nice pacing and slick production value.

Odds are you're going to like this lively spin on the true story of six MIT mathletes who broke the Vegas bank in the 1990s.

21 blows the endgame when a jarring shift to a con-game finale turns an intriguing drama into just another popcorn movie -- the movie equivalent of saying "hit me" when you've got a 17 showing.

21 is built around some standard-issue plot mechanics, but it's still a clever and novel card-sharp thriller.

21 doesn't come close to hitting the jackpot. It's more like a break-even night at the tables.

The movie definitely has a Vegas feel at times, probably because it was filmed in real casinos like Planet Hollywood and the Hard Rock.

Too much of 21 is filler. As Cole Williams, a detector of card counters who is being made obsolete by a software program, Laurence Fishburne is barely in this movie.

Even though you can predict what happens, 21 is still fairly compelling for a movie about counting cards at a blackjack table.

It’s glitzy. It’s suspenseful. It’s a wallow in get-rich-quick ambition. Of course, it’s also largely uninhabited. But at least the empty vessels are attractive.

21 doesn't quite hit the jackpot, but with popcorn it should satisfy.

There aren't many emotions to be gambled in following Massachusetts Institute of Technology math whizzes who conspire to beat the Las Vegas blackjack tables. The robots of Transformers have more blood to them.

Robert Luketic's movie is a predictable moral tale enacted by blandly pretty young things who bear little resemblance to the average brainiac.

Watching 21 won't break any of your bones, but it will remind you of a lot of other films in which young, impetuous people learn lessons and then end up winners despite it all.

Even as 21 becomes more desperate (and less convincing) by the minute, the movie's headlong, dance-if-you-dare party vibe never quits.

There's a trap that movies face that snares 21 early and often: If the words in the script tell us something, then the visuals and the action had better back it up.

If a hard skeleton of formula holds the movie version of the story together, the twists and turns of fortune keep the viewer fully engaged.

While 21 is entertaining fun, it's flawed in its overuse of Hollywood cliches and trickery that makes it predictable and less believable.

Director Robert Luketic has made the increasingly rare two-hour movie that actually feels shorter, and the cast -- given the limitations of their characters -- is across the board enjoyable.

What must it be like for a geek genius to saunter into a casino and know he's going to bring down the house? 21 never really answers this question because the people in it are all prefabricated stereotypes.

You could practically fling the raw material at a good-looking cast, throw the ingredients into a cookie-cutter structure and have it work. Not surprisingly, that's what's been done, and it actually doesn't work well at all.

Blackjack is a fairly static, uncinematic game, but Luketic lays on the computer tricks, animating the cards and chips in hyper-close-up and upping the sound effects.

21 has all the hallmarks of a classic tale of studious innocence corrupted by the dazzle of easy money, the fantasy life of Las Vegas excess and the thrill of the illicit.

Before sinking into a predictable morality tale, 21 coasts on the superficial thrill of watching casinos take a few hits, but gamblers looking for a how-to lesson on winning in Vegas will be putting their pencils down pretty quickly.

21 isn't pretentious, exactly, but it's damn close, and in trying to whip up a melodramatic morality tale the film becomes an increasingly flabby slog.

21 contains all the elements of an exciting youth-oriented Ocean's Eleven or a more elaborate Risky Business, but it makes little impact.

This is one case where, no matter the bet, no one wins -- not the audience nor the artists involved.

21 is about seductions of the easiest sorts. This is its problem.

Like a seriously troubled gambling addict, 21 shows its hand too early and then stays at the table too long for its own good.

The scenes of the team at work, playing dress-up while they rake in the chips, have some real joy in them. Despite the music-video vibe, it's at these times that 21 seems not just possible, but engaging.

With no moral questions or heart-pumping drama to anchor a good story, 21 arrives at the table with a handful of chips and drops them all over the floor.

The film never adds up to much more than a basic cautionary tale about staying focused on what's important.

Counting cards in Las Vegas isn't illegal. Just dangerous. If only 21 had the same sense of risk it attempts to portray.

21 is another two-faced moralistic entertainment that shows us how much fun it is to live large, then punishes its characters for acting out our fantasies.

There's enough action here to keep you awake, but don't expect to walk away a winner.

The fascinating story of six college students who took Las Vegas for millions gets dealt a bad hand in 21, which turns their true-life saga into a slick, shallow and thoroughly generic caper flick.

The movie's greatest assets are its good-looking young leads, Kate Bosworth and Jim Sturgess, as well as the Las Vegas glitz.

Far less fascinating as an over-packaged, over-plotted thriller than it was as a nonfiction book, 21 is the sort of movie that inspires the question, "Why didn't they just make it into a documentary?"

There's not much depth here, and viewers would be wise to skip the popcorn and head to the bookstore for the enjoyable read from Mezrich.

There's some placid entertainment here and Kevin Spacey steals everything but the light fixtures as a swingin' math professor.

The Boston scenes have a lived-in veracity, and the Vegas scenes have the allure of tawdry fantasy.

21 is a mini-Ocean's Eleven about, and for, people who are the age of its title.

21 simultaneously tries to pat its own head and rub its own belly and, like most of us, can't pull it off.

The story, based on Ben Mezrich's best-selling Bringing Down the House, strives to be suspenseful and exciting, but instead is repetitive, implausible and overlong.

It's funny how movies based on real stories can be the most formulaic and predictable.

21 shares with the Las Vegas mythos the same stale temptations: empty glitz and little substance.

For all the risk-taking on screen, there's little evidence of it behind the camera. Instead, the filmmakers are content to dull us with this very safe bet.

Hollywood has an uncanny knack for taking potentially provocative material and dumbing it down to the point of complete irrelevancy.

Be ready for a schizophrenic cinematic experience that may leave you feeling like you just saw three separate movies.

Ultimately 21 is like a couple of hours at a slot machine: pretty lights, some superficial excitement, but ultimately the house gets your money.

Stands when it should hit, never doubles down and wimps out to the point that it turns a pretty compelling tale into a bust.

Taking it in is like watching a blackjack player motioning to hit while holding two face cards. In terms of sheer stupidity, it's almost breathtaking.

The movie's chief audience, consequently, will probably be gullible and young, responding to the cliches only because they haven't seen them before. They have a word in Vegas for these people: Suckers.

It's nearly as much fun as watching an insurance professional compute actuarial tables.

Could there be a more visually tedious kind of con game to watch than blackjack card-counters? Unless Hollywood gives us a tale of devil-may-care stamp forgers, 21 will own the title as the crime snoozefest of the decade.

The script is brutal, full of banal dialogue and plot points diametrically opposed to the essence of gaming: Viewers will always feel two steps ahead of the action.

21 assumes that the spectacle of smart people doing dumb things will be inherently compelling, but the story doesn’t have any juice.