OxfordPress.com

Grade: B+

Verdict: No clean getaway, but offers a crowd-pleasing trio of stars and lots of funny stuff.

Details: Starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett. Directed by Barry Levinson. Rated PG-13 for mild violence and sexual situations. Two hours, 3 minutes.

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Review: The new heist film “Bandits” blithely steals from a smorgasbord of movies. You can see bits and pieces of “Jules and Jim,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Paint Your Wagon,” “The Odd Couple” and “It Happened One Night.” There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. What is wrong is the movie's overall shape. If director Barry Levinson (“Rain Man,” “Diner”) had chopped a half-hour from it, “Bandits” could have been a brilliant comedy. As is, it's still very entertaining.

The movie's odd couple is Joe (Bruce Willis) and Terry (Billy Bob Thornton). Joe is impulsive, with anger management issues. Terry is neurotic, with a deep streak of hypochondria.

They rob banks.

We meet them as they're escaping from an Oregon prison. Their plan is to rob enough banks to finance a permanent vacation in Mexico — even though Terry has “sanitation issues.”

Still, it's Terry who comes up with the scheme that will make them nationally famous as “The Sleepover Bandits.” It's a no-frills, low-risk strategy. They take the bank manager hostage the night before the robbery, stay at his house overnight and, in the morning, go with him when he opens the vault. No security guards, no skittish tellers, no innocent bystanders. Then Kate (Cate Blanchett) bursts into their lives. A ditzy housewife with a wealthy, neglectful husband, she looks like trouble to Terry. “She's an iceberg waiting for the Titanic,” he tells Joe.

Blanchett gives a delicious performance in a terribly underwritten role. When you realize the script isn't going to do anything with her, you find yourself appreciating her chameleon-like ability to transform herself — so delicate in “Elizabeth,” so scrawny in “The Gift,” so lush here.

But just as Kate derails Joe and Terry's relationship, she also knocks the movie askew. The crisp playfulness of the first half gets sidetracked as Levinson and screenwriter Harley Peyton become distracted by their oddball threesome and let the snappy Sleepover Bandits stuff slide.

For the most part, the gifted cast carries the picture over its lapses. Willis and Thornton are a surprisingly delightful team. Willis' well-honed movie star smoothness — not an easy thing, by the way — mixes wonderfully with Thornton's quirky character work. Essentially, Willis lets Thornton steal the movie. To hear Terry wake out of a deep sleep and blurt out of nowhere, “Beavers and ducks!!!” — well, that's my idea of a magic movie moment.

“Bandits” has a wonderful cast, a crowd-pleasing spirit and, well, a few dull spots. But on the whole, it comes out on the plus side. Beavers and ducks, indeed!

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, (none)