'LOGAN LUCKY'.........OCEAN'S HILLBILLIES.....

Logan Lucky (2017)   Steven Soderbergh may be the only director working now who's making movies for no other reason than the pure joy of filmmaking........

             How else could you explain the existence of this movie, which is nothing more than Soderbergh's "Ocean's 11/12/13" trilogy re-done with backwoods blue-collar Red-staters.......only minus the hyperventilating hyperbole you'd get if the Coen brothers had directed it.

             It's a tribute to the actors involved (Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Riley Keough) that you never stop to ponder how this collection of seemingly primitive rubes could not only dream up an elaborate heist of a Nascar speedway, but pull it off with 'Topkapi'-like precision.....

            It begs the question.....was a movie like this really worth Soderbergh's time and talent?

             Hell yes, if turns out as entertaining as this one.

            Soderbergh and his game-for-anything cast obviously had a great time making it......and it comes off as a throwback to the kind of movies that just wanted to show you a relaxing good time......without beating you over the head......(don't believe the rarity of this achievement? Try finding another movie like this.....)

            In this day and age of IMAX/3-D,  over-hyped monstrosities, that now sounds like a limited goal for a major film director.....,but Soderbergh doesn't care.....

            Neither do we.

            We love him for that.......who else would go from making this bouncy frivolous movie to shooting a fast, cheap horror film on a cellphone?  He's doing it for the sheer fun of it and we say....more power to 'im.

            The only downside......"Logan Lucky" has no aspirations to hit any heights. It chugs along at an even pace and even when it reveals a few twists and turns, the film never breaks out of its modest goal to simply keep you smiling all the way through it.

           The biggest jokes here come from the sly physical gags.....and by physical, we literally mean the physicality of the actors. Daniel Craig's drawling West Virginia convict is made up to look like the iconic Robert Shaw villain in "From Russian With Love".......Seth MacFarlane pops up in deep disguise as a creepy, obnoxious British Nascar driver.......and Hilary Swank drops as an FBI agent toward the end, sounding like she's doing a deeply tongue-in-cheek sendup of Jodie Foster's "Silence Of The Lamb" rookie Fed......

             Nothing spectacular, but this lower-income gang, cleverly described in the film as "Ocean's 7-11" delivers a breezy fun 2 hours.......and that's way more than you'll get from a host of the usual bloated CGI behemoths that infect the multi-plex.  3 & 1/2 stars (*** 1/2)