Ben Campbell, a 21-year-old student with a 97% average, and as you might imagine, no life, gets recruited by a team of hustling card-counters led by their calculating, manipulative, vindictive university professor. Together, they play the
You know, in pacing, style, characters, theme, and overall mood, and even plot structure, I found this movie to be a lot like The Girl Next Door. It’s almost like the two movies are cut from the same mould. All you need to do is substitute porn with gambling, replace Elisha Cuthbert with Kate Bosworth as the hot trophy girl, replace Timothy Olyphant with Kevin Spacey as the charming but psychopathically self-serving antagonist, replace Chris Marquette and Paul Dano with Josh Gad and Sam Golzari as the two unpopular, but true friends, and replace James Remar with Laurence Fishburne as the intervening, powerful character. Presto! You’ve got a whole new movie with the exact same formula – not that this is necessarily a complaint for I am actually very fond of the plot structure used in The Girl Next Door, and that doesn’t mean 21 can’t still be an original story. But Elisha Cuthbert is undeniably hotter. At least for me. (Swoon!)
Well worth watching: 4 stars
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