Here’s a suggestion to Danny Ocean: If you need a con artist for your team, stay away from Ben Campbell and his friends.

Danny Ocean is the brains of the Ocean’s 11, 12, and 13 heists. Ben Campbell is the brains of 21. There are, you should pardon the expression, oceans of difference between them. 21 is based on a true story about a group of college students who set out to get rich by playing blackjack. In this case, “based on a true story” means that someone among screenwriters Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb and director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) read Ben Mezrich’s book, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, then managed to turn it into a forgettable potboiler. I haven’t read Mezrich’s book, but just the thought of winning a bundle at Vegas is fascinating. It must have taken considerable work to turn the movie into a snoozer. As played by Jim Sturgess, Ben is a brilliant student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has been accepted into Harvard Medical School. But it takes $300,000 to attend Harvard, and Ben works as an assistant manager at a haberdashery. He’s desperate for money. Ben’s brilliance comes to the attention of professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), who has a neat little side business. He has developed a system for counting cards at the blackjack tables of Las Vegas, and he has trained a group of students to win bundles of money. The problem is, one of his key players has left this lucrative sideline for a job with Google, and Micky needs a new body. Ben’s his boy. After some initial protests (and enticement by the team “hottie”), Ben joins the gang, and pretty soon the money starts rolling in. Up to this point, the movie’s reasonably interesting, despite some obvious questions the moviemakers choose to ignore. (Harvard doesn’t offer student loans? No other medical schools are interested in helping out a summa cum laude graduate of M.I.T.?) But things really get dumb when the gang gets to Vegas. Mickey insists there’s nothing wrong with what they’re doing, yet he gives his crew fake IDs, has them wear disguises, and tells them to stay away from each other. And no one asks why (Duh No. 1). And if they’re not supposed to be seen together, why do they share a suite? (Duh No. 2). And why do they keep going back to the same casino? (Duh No. 3). What Mickey has failed to tell them is that although card-counting isn’t illegal, it’s forbidden by the casinos, which train staff members to watch for counters and ban them from the premises (or take them to the boiler room for a beating, according to the filmmakers). In one of the casinos that Mickey and his crew have targeted, Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), “a loss prevention specialist,” spots Ben & Co. winning a little too much. If there is one big asset in 21, it is cinematographer Russell Carpenter. His camera work give the cards and the chips more personality than the people who, other than Ben and the hottie Jill (Kate Bosworth), have been turned into one big stereotype. Sturgess, who was in Across the Universe and The Other Boleyn Girl, makes a bland hero, sort of in the Andrew McCarthy mold. And because the filmmakers give him no common sense, it’s hard to believe he’s a genius. Case in point: Ben keeps his winnings in the ceiling of his dorm room. OK, I can understand why he doesn’t want to risk questions with a savings account, but why not use a safe deposit box? Oh, because it won’t help the plot. Bosworth, who starred with Spacey in Beyond the Sea and was in Superman Returns, is forgettable, and Spacey, who won Oscars for The Usual Suspects and American Beauty, is coasting. 21 starts out with a reasonable amount of promise, sort of an Ocean’s 11 for the college set. But keep looking, Danny Ocean. These geniuses barely get a passing grade.