rjhemsley It works best in that time period and Maclain is her most glamorous given the height of that era. There was no need to remake this underrated classic.This offering actually mocks the brilliant script it steals from, uses freak plastic faced actors, and turns a sophisticated plot into a tacky mess, so juvenile one feels like puking the second Alan Rickman appears naked enough on screen. The original character was very proper, not a clown for super cheap childish giggles.The beauty from "The Mask" 's face has melted, so some of the scenes may make you wince, which may spoil your ability to suspend disbelief! The Coens' first huge flop... oh well... that sort of remote hick theme doesn't work every time, and is becoming as repetitive as the line "you just don't don't get it, do ya????Charade and How to Steal a Million, are a gazillion times better too, if you appreciate the genre!

SquigglyCrunch Gambit follows a man who seeks to get revenge on his employer by messing with his massive, and expensive, art collection. The best part of the movie was the hotel scene. I'm not going to say much more, but it's pretty hilarious, and the whole movie is kind of worth it just for that one scene. The rest of the movie is just fine. The acting is fine, the characters are pretty fun, but not too compelling, and the comedy is only good during the hotel scene really. It's enjoyable but also nothing special. Overall Gambit is a fun movie to watch, but that's about it. In the end I probably wouldn't recommend it.

Scorbutico C Perhaps I am mistaken but I thought the basic idea of a comedy was for it to be funny, and in this regard this film failed miserably. Actors going through the motions, (rescued slightly by the performance of Alan Rickman, who was without doubt the best of the bad bunch). The time you spend watching this film you can never have back, my only recommendation would be not to start watching it, and if you have already started to do so then stop immediately. Dull, dull, dull Stereotypical characters, staid 'jokes' and a predicable story. A director and actors may have got away with such a film in the 70s but such a tired formula doesn't need trotting out now. We almost smiled once hence a score better than 3. Avoid.

classicalsteve Sturgeon's Law (paraphrased) states "90% of fiction, music, art and films is of low quality". The Cohen Brothers have a pretty good track record with more than 50% of their offerings residing in the elite 10% of "good material". However, when good filmmakers miss the strike zone, they tend to hit the batter. In this case, the batter is the audience, and the Cohen brothers, despite good intentions, pitched one right at the head missing the strike zone by a mile. "Gambit" is a good idea with a good cast wasted on a poorly written script. The "funny parts" weren't funny, and I couldn't take the serious parts seriously.The central premise, decent but needed a lot more rewrites, involves the hustling of a billionaire magnate out of millions by selling him a fake painting. Harry Deane (Colin Firth) is a disgruntled employee seeking to outwit his vain employer, billionaire Lord Lionel Shabandar (Alan Rickman). Lord Lionel has a weakness for Monet paintings, particularly the ones featuring haystacks. Deane solicits the help of The Major (Tom Courtenay) who can replicate paintings by the best modern masters. Before the events of the story, we learn the Major has faked a Monet. Now they need a hook to entice their prey.They find a pretty young woman, PJ Puznowski (Cameron Diaz), a cowgirl rodeo enthusiast in Texas, and create a narrative in which her family has supposedly owned a real Monet for many years. Deane and the Major find her at a bar in Texas, and she agrees to engage in the deception for a fee of £500,000, or about $800,000 US. For the con to work, they take a picture of PJ and her mother sitting on an old 1970's couch in a caravan/mobile home which is then published in a rodeo magazine, which happens to be one of Lord Lionel's many publications. There's a short sequence in which Deane and the Major imagine how the con will play out successfully before they return the current "time" in which they need to convince PJ.She agrees, and then Deane shows the magazine photo to Lord Lionel who believes the painting only to be a replica because of its residing in a mobile home (called a "caravan" in British English) in Texas. Deane convinces him they should at least explore the possibility the painting is real, and they fly PJ to London. PJ meets Lionel, but rather to Deane's horror, PJ takes a liking to Lord Lionel and begins having doubts about engaging in the deception. Back at his flat, Deane keeps getting punched out by his neighbor. Is this supposed to be funny? Also, we learn Deane is nearly tapped out, being forced to pay extravagant prices for PJ's accommodations at the Savoy Hotel in London, one of the most expensive in Europe.Lord Lionel then asks PJ on a dinner date at a Japanese Restaurant where they meet the Kon'nichiwa Media Club who are there to interpret Japanese for the English-speaking guests. Up until now, some of the humor was barely tolerable and I wanted the story to get on track about the con. However, the Cohen Brothers opted for nearly-offensive stereotyping of Japanese people I guess for cheap laughs. Then Deane finds a priceless vase in the hallway of the hotel and tries to pilfer it by risking his life on the hotel ledge. Couldn't he have just stuffed it into a suitcase? I found the rest of the film going from hard-to-watch to nearly-insufferable.You have to credit the three leads for doing the best they could with a mediocre script. Rickman makes an excellent multi-zillionaire as PJ calls him, Firth a good straight-man to Diaz and Rickman, and Diaz as the clueless southern American who knows nothing about British/European culture. Unfortunately, there were too many over-the-top moments which I guess were designed to be funny but more in the "you can't be serious" department. Deane literally losing his pants to steal the vase was one of many. Also, I wasn't quite buying that Deane was "tapped out". I was expecting something at the beginning, maybe a sequence with him and Rickman in which he's denied a raise or similar denial for loyal service. Unfortunately, the Cohen brothers missed the strike zone on this one and ended up in Sturgeon's 90%. What a bummer.