Film critics appear to have reached a consensus that the stars steal the show in Bandits, but that the show itself isn’t much of a winner.
“This quirky heist comedy manages to hold our interest even through its slower, more self-indulgent moments … because of the acting, which features familiar performers (Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett) taking on diverting variations of what they usually do,” writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.
“It’s rare for a movie to have three such likable characters and be so unlikable itself,” comments Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. Many critics also agree that the film would have been much improved had it been cut by about 20-30 minutes.
If that had been done, commented Eleanor Ringel Gillespie in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Bandits could have been a brilliant comedy. As is, it’s still very entertaining.”
Several critics also suggest that the film tries to be too hip for its own good. As Bob Strauss writes in the Los Angeles Daily News: “Bandits is an enjoyable and extremely well-crafted mess. … It would probably be more substantial if it wasn’t so ambitious.”
Joe Morgenstern makes a similar point in the Wall Street Journal: “Bandits,” he says, “wants to do everything at once: celebrate its stars, demonstrate its sophistication, emulate famous films, lay on whimsical disguises and toy with a too-hip narrative device.”
