AH, VEGAS: AMERICA'S PLAYground, the cut-rate Babylon or, as Hunter S Thompson put it in reference to the Circus Circus Hotel: "What the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war." Given its unique status as a
tourist-approved den of iniquity, you'd think some better films would have been made about the city. Sure there have been some great ones (well, Casino), some fun ones (Swingers, Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven remake), and some serious ones (Leaving Las Vegas). Mostly, though, this neon nightmare has inspired films as hideous as the city's theme-park hotels and family-friendly strip shows. Need a roll call? Try Showgirls, Viva Las Vegas, the original Ocean's Eleven and that bit at the end of Rain Man. To that list can now be added two new releases.
First up is 21, a dumbed-down, nonsensical film about a group of maths students who put their counting abilities to work at the blackjack tables of Las Vegas. Loosely based on Ben Mezrich's best-seller, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, it's the fictional tale of Ben (Jim Sturgess) a brain box MIT maths student who dreams of going to Harvard medical school but has neither the cash to pay for it nor exciting enough life experiences to win him a scholarship.
Character motivation thus groaningly established, an offer he can't refuse materialises in the form of Kevin Spacey's maths professor, Micky Rosa, a charismatic shyster with a profitable side-business that employs his best students to use their superior cranial capacities to beat the odds at blackjack by counting cards. Cue Ben participating in endless brain-training montages to bring him up to speed on the elaborate system of sign language, memory tricks and word games that allows them to beat the house and win big in Vegas every time. It's standard rise-fall-redemption stuff as the geek with nothing suddenly becomes a player with everything, only to realise he's losing the things that matter most to him in the process. Will he make amends by the end credits? The laws of probability leave you in no doubt.
Which brings us to What Happens in Vegas. "Stays in Vegas", is the traditional end to that phrase and it's hard not to wish this latest formulaic rom-com had adhered to that notion as Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz find themselves forced to give marriage a shot after mistakenly getting hitched and winning $3 million on the slots. Strangers on a weekend bender when they meet, Kutcher's recently sacked furniture maker and Diaz's recently dumped commodities broker are sentenced to "six months hard marriage" by an unsympathetic judge who freezes their disputed winnings in an effort to make them take seriously the vows they entered into so drunkenly. However, in an effort to force the other to concede defeat and bail on both the marriage and the money, each embarks on a course of devious behaviour involving urinating in sinks, spiking smoothies with pep pills, cosying up to the in-laws and putting temptation into one another's paths. Rom-com conventions dictate that we shouldn't bet against their mutual contempt gradually giving way to mutual attraction, nor gamble against a happy-ever-after ending. When it comes to Vegas movies, we're all losers.
The full article contains 583 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
