The Controversial Bruce Willis & Julia Roberts Scene, Defined

Breaking the fourth wall in movie is each a radical idea and one which’s readily acquainted to audiences, even when they do not know the phrase “breaking the fourth wall.” Acknowledging the viewers in some type or trend has occurred in all the things from Disney animation (as when Scar objects passionately to listening to the tune “It is a Small World” at one level in “The Lion King”) to ’80s-era teen comedies to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However from time to time, audiences are thrown for a real loop when the fourth wall, that demarcation level between the large display and people watching what’s displayed there, is demolished so swiftly and inexplicably that there is nothing left however the rubble. 20 years in the past, one such second occurred in a mainstream, big-budget sequel that was established to happen in some facsimile of the actual world with out routinely occupying house in our actual world. The movie is 2004’s wonderful “Ocean’s Twelve,” and the scene in query happens when Danny Ocean’s spouse Tess is named upon to play a crucial position: Julia Roberts. Seeing as Tess is performed by … Julia Roberts already, that complicates the matter only a wee bit.

It isn’t as if the 2001 remake of “Ocean’s Eleven” did not set up itself as a movie that exists in one thing awfully near the actual world. It isn’t simply that the unique movie is about and shot in Las Vegas, all the way down to the masterful ultimate scene with many of the eponymous crew standing in entrance of the famed fountains on the Bellagio. The important thing occasion throughout which Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his fellow thieves steal a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} from a vault combining cash from a couple of totally different Vegas casinos can also be a prize battle between real-life boxers Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko. (Add to that the truth that when Ocean is first free of jail, he makes a name to his parole officer instantly in entrance of a Trump Tower, and real-world connections are unimaginable to keep away from.) However whereas it is easy to take a look at the primary “Ocean’s” as a refined commentary on the facility of movie stardom, and treating tough-guy characters just like the shark-like businessman Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) as stand-ins for film-studio executives, the 2004 sequel ramps that connection as much as impossibly excessive ranges. Benedict returns in that movie to actual revenge for the cash he misplaced by the hands of Ocean and his crew, however his calls for for the dozen boil all the way down to: steal again what you already stole, after which steal some extra. It is a model of how filmmakers are informed {that a} sequel must be the identical as the unique, however with extra, ostensibly to please the identical audiences who flocked to the primary one.

The meta features of “Ocean’s Twelve” get virtually overwhelming when Tess is roped into the state of affairs. By the point the remaining few members of Danny’s crew name her, they’re in Italy, she’s within the American Northeast, and everybody else is in jail after having been caught trying to steal a priceless Faberge egg. The essential plan is for Tess to play a “small position” within the heist by pretending to be Julia Roberts in order that she will be able to see the egg in query and the theft can go off with out one other snag. However simply as the actual fact that one in all America’s most well-known main women is being known as upon to play a personality who has to play her serves as a comedic snag, the issues worsen when none apart from Bruce Willis, enjoying himself, exhibits up and acts pleasant to Tess (as a result of he would not understand she’s not actually you-know-who), accompanying her to the museum. That this gambit would not work as deliberate (not less than initially) ought to come as no shock, however the gambit itself takes a supporting position to the entire references to actual life all through this sequence. Little doubt that comedy is subjective, and for those who do not chortle, nothing can persuade you, however that is arguably the funniest scene in Steven Soderbergh’s filmography, and among the many better of Roberts’ personal profession for the way keen she is to mock herself.

As soon as it turns into clear to us that Tess is being known as upon to play the actor who performs her to start with (first because of some subtitled dialogue between a hotelier and his fellow employees member), the script begins leaning into in-jokes in regards to the actor’s life and profession. Simply as Roberts herself is not in as a lot of “Ocean’s Twelve” as a result of she was pregnant on the time of filming, the remaining members of Danny’s crew, together with Basher Tarr (Don Cheadle) and Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon), begin making an attempt to educate her on the way to be Julia, together with the way to “shield your pretend child.” After all, a part of the humor is that they get a number of the particulars improper; when Tess-as-Julia has to hiss at them that the actor did not seem in “4 Weddings and a Funeral,” it is a good gag for 2 causes: first, for the popular culture confusion, and second, as a result of Roberts did seem in “Notting Hill” with “4 Weddings” star Hugh Grant. And the back-and-forth she has with Linus and Basher as they attempt to get her within the proper headspace feeds into in style beliefs about well-known individuals. After they inform her that “You are enjoying an actress, they’re insecure,” and she or he snaps again, “I am freaking out!,” they cheer her on, although she’s not doing it to embody her half.

When Willis exhibits up, because of coincidentally staying on the similar Italian lodge the place Tess and the others are, the meta humor turns into virtually delightfully alienating. It isn’t simply that Willis’ cameo is punctuated by a working gag during which a number of individuals inform him politely however smugly that they “knew” about the large twist on the finish of “The Sixth Sense” with out even naming the movie. (Or that Willis, at one level, mutters to Tess-as-Julia that in that case many individuals knew the twist, “If everybody’s so freaking good, how come the film did $675 million worldwide?”) Willis is there as a pal of the well-known actor, whilst he has to just accept an unplanned jibe from Linus, who tries to distract Willis by noting how a lot he should perceive “that little statue on the mantle smirking” at a fellow A-Lister. The top of this meta rabbit gap is each easy and ridiculous, as Willis makes an attempt to name Roberts’ residence to see if he can get one in all his youngsters’ toys again; when Tess takes the cellphone from him to conduct the decision and preserve the charade, she winds up on the cellphone with … Julia Roberts.

To get pleasure from any film, you need to droop your disbelief. To benefit from the “Ocean’s” trilogy directed by Soderbergh, as is the case with any stable heist image, you actually must droop your disbelief, as a result of in any other case, you might nitpick all kinds of points. However disbelief cannot even exist if you wish to get pleasure from a scene during which Julia Roberts has to take a seat in virtually stoic silence as males natter on about her accent, her voice, the best way she seems, and so on., all beneath the guise of not really being the actor however being somebody who simply seems lots like her. There isn’t a world in which you’ll be able to take into consideration the questions raised by the second during which Tess is on the cellphone with the actor who performs Tess (and solely one of many two of those “characters” is conscious of what is actually occurring), with out making your head spin or your nostril bleed. The enjoyment of this scene can also be what makes it so divisive and controversial; it is so inside-baseball, so navel-gaze-y, so self-referential that it begins to really feel like a scene that exists purely to entertain the individuals who made the film. 

It isn’t that “Ocean’s Twelve” just isn’t enjoying on gags about its stars, who had develop into much more well-known within the interval between 2001’s “Ocean’s Eleven” and the 2004 sequel. Clooney will get to do a working gag with a few of his co-stars during which he asks them how previous they suppose he’s, and he is virtually horrified on the solutions. Damon, who was juggling filming this and the second Jason Bourne film, will get to play an inverse of that cool and picked up amnesiac spy, as he fumbles his approach by way of a coded dialog with Danny and a mysterious and enigmatic Jap European. However there actually is not fairly something that tops the prolonged farcical comedian setpiece that winds up with everybody going to jail. A part of the sequence is nothing lower than a contented accident, since Willis was purportedly within the combine to play Benedict in “Ocean’s Eleven” earlier than Garcia stepped in. Would this scene work half as properly with out Willis’s mix of insouciance and annoyance at “Julia’s” handlers and her crazy physician (actually simply Carl Reiner’s character Saul in disguise)? Although there are different actors with whom Roberts had labored previous to this movie, from the aforementioned Grant to Denzel Washington, Willis simply looks like the one A-Lister who might present up in such a figuring out sequence enjoying himself and having enjoyable with it.

That latter half is essential: having enjoyable. It is a honest declare to notice that the “Ocean’s” trilogy works in addition to it does, or not less than strikes as easily because it does, as a result of it seems like everybody concerned within the movie had a good time. For “Ocean’s Twelve,” a movie that has key scenes in Lake Como, the place Clooney had a villa, the notion that everybody on display had a good time virtually turned a simple critique. There is a motive why some shops have dubbed this one of many worst sequels ever (even when it is not), and far of the 2007 capper “Ocean’s 13” looks like a corrective for the much less broadly beloved “Ocean’s Twelve” all the way down to Clooney dealing with off in opposition to an actor from the “Godfather” franchise within the type of Al Pacino. 20 years later, some individuals might bear in mind the prolonged riff on “Entrapment” during which the sly thief performed by Vincent Cassel all however dances his approach by way of a robust discipline of lasers to steal that Faberge egg, however the scene during which Julia Roberts is enjoying herself and another person who has to faux to be her often is the apotheosis of individuals’s frustrations. 

Once more: humor is subjective. Both you discover it humorous or you do not. However this fashion of humor is greatest summed up in the best way the Academy Award-winning actor is credited in each the primary and second movies. In “Ocean’s Eleven,” the title card reads “And Introducing Julia Roberts as Tess.” Within the sequel, the title card reads “And Introducing Tess as Julia Roberts.” When you’re on the proper wavelength, that is the tip of the enormously humorous iceberg. For everybody else, although, it might simply be too odd. Their loss.