Sometimes, it’s just a little too much to have to pretend that Sandra Bullock is an ex-con planning the ultimate heist.

I mean, on a good day, sure. Yesterday, however, was not one of those days.

Everything about Oceans 8 was staid. It was style over substance and oh so disappointing.

But it also made me angry.

Why go to the trouble of bringing so many incredible women actors together just to serve up tripe like that?

It seems anything will pass for a movie in Hollywood these days.

And who would have thought the film’s desire to present an empowering, female version of a cult hit - think the fabulous Ghostbusters - would so naively highlight the frustrating double standards that women are held to?

Perhaps the most cloying moment for me, was the very opening scene when the camera panned into Sandra Bullock’s face at her parole hearing.

Instead of a woman facing the reality of prison, the camera revealed the crime gang’s ringleader, Debbie Ocean, caked in foundation; hair tousled sexily; and frankly, bloody fabulous eye makeup.

Yes, she was a total badass.

But she ended up being just another male fantasy: An echo chamber of her dead brother from the former films, and lacking an identity that was uniquely hers.

Debbie Ocean is the kind of character you desperately want to connect with.

But as you watch her and the dynamic women she enlists to her underworld cause, you struggle to understand the charisma she apparently exudes.

Lou, played by the fabulous Cate Blanchett, is Debbie’s high-fashion lover/wing woman.

She spends the film under-filling vodka bottles, dressing in sequins and high-street grunge, and adopting a too-cool-for-the-room stance by draping herself effortlessly off her mid-thigh during social encounters

I love Cate.

She can virtually do no wrong in my eyes.

This role just gives her nothing much to work with. Has to be said that she looks ah-mazing, though.

This stylish duo quickly build a crew to help them filch a glamorous diamond necklace worth $150 million from the neck of a precocious film star called Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway clearly having fun).

Oh and it will all go down during New York fashion’s night of nights, The Met Gala.

Helena Bonham Carter is under-utilised as the flailing Irish fashion designer Rose Weil. She’s always brilliant though, and plays tragedy so well.

Pop star Rihanna is awkward and trope-like as the nonchalant, doobie-smoking Jamaican hacker “Nine Ball”.

Sarah Poulson is in her element as the unleashed housewife, Tammy.

Awkwafina is quirky as the fleet-fingered Constance.

Mindy Kaling, as mollycoddled diamond expert Amita, has nowhere near enough to say.

In fact, one of the few moments where the cinema laughed in unison, was during a scene with Bonham Carter where she utters but one word.

A dapper Richard Armitage plays the fiendish, double-crossing Claude Becker.

Hasn’t he come far since playing Tolkein’s sexiest dwarf, Thorin, in The Hobbit films?

This whole Ocean's 8 caper was unsatisfying, shallow and failed to meet my needs in a whole lot of ways.

Yes, it had women playing the leads and that was terrific. But why not give them some actual presence on screen?

Why are women relegated to style without substance?

Why can’t they have backstories, and be interesting without being dressed in head-to-toe sequins?

Why can’t a woman be gritty, and look like crap in prison, and BE REAL?

I suppose the answer is: “Because, who would want to go to a cinema to see that?”

Well, I would, for one.