Musical chairs or Russian roulette? Sometimes there’s as much tense drama in the casting of a Hollywood movie as there is in the finished product. This week’s example: Focus, a caper film about a veteran con man and the young woman he takes as his accomplice. Ryan Gosling, then Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck were touted as the dapper con, while the female lead was reckoned to be played, at one time or another, by Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, Jessica Biel, Rose Byrne, Olivia Munn — basically, every working actress under 35. 
 
 Since Focus conjures up a more relaxed time in Hollywood history, when the top stars radiated their golden appeal in romantic comedies about duplicitous souls, writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa might have dreamed of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, who paired in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 To Catch a Thief. Grant had just hit 50, and Kelly was 25, but their upmarket glamour and wiles made a perfect match for a movie about an aging cat burglar and the young American heiress who dares to play his game. 
 
 Ficarra and Requa, the authors of this script that everyone and nobody wanted to star in, finally settled on Will Smith, 46, and Margot Robbie, the 24-year-old blond Aussie who shared Leonardo DiCaprio’s bed (and a ton of cocaine) in The Wolf of Wall Street. The mix of longtime star and minx on the rise is one tasty element in the success of a movie that approaches the modest goals and effortless allure of a 60-year-old Hitchcock. 
 
 “I can convince anyone of anything,” says Smith’s Nicky Spurgeon, and the man is not boasting. The con in con man is short for confidence — what he radiates, and what he extracts from his marks before fleecing them. The blithe smile, the genial but steely authority he wears like a bespoke suit: that’s Smith since his Fresh Prince days. 
 
 What’s odd is that in most of his movies — from the time he sauntered into action stardom with Independence Day, through a decade of dystopian sci-fi roles in I, Robot, I Am Legend, Hancock and the misfortune known as After Earth — Smith has been obliged to glower, macho-man style, as if Bruce Willis hadn’t already patented the stoic scowl. Even in the Men is Black movies, the actor’s cool was deadpan; the smile had to be inferred. So Ficarra and Requa deserve some credit in letting Will be Will in the star’s first charm barrage since 2005’s Hitch. 
 
 Spurgeon (whose Urban Dictionary definition genteelly translates as “the man of all men”) runs a con outfit of 20 or so filchers who work casinos, racetracks, football games — any place where cocky rich guys can be separated from their loot. He’s on hiatus when he meets the creamy blond Jess Barrett (Robbie), who pulls a clumsy ruse that he plays along with simply from professional curiosity. Out of her league but a quick study, Jess learns to pick the pockets of smitten strangers and earns her bona fides. She’s now ready to be Nicky’s partner, and perhaps rival, in con. “Congratulations,” Nicky’s aide-de-camp Horst (Brennan Brown) tells Jess, “you’re a criminal.” 
 
 See the Most Memorable On-Screen Couples Columbia Pictures/Getty Images Silver Screen Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images Columbia Pictures/Getty Images Popperfoto/Getty Images Archive Photos/Getty Images Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images United Artists/Getty Images Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images Fotos International/Getty Images Columbia/Getty Images Paramount Pictures/Fotos International/Getty Images Lucasfilm NBC/Getty Images Vestron/Getty Images 20th Century Fox Hulton Archive/Getty Images Buena Vista/Getty Images Disney SGranitz—WireImage/Getty Images Paramount Pictures NBC/Getty Images NBC/Getty Images 20th Century Fox/Getty Images Getty Images HBO/Getty Images Buena Vista/Getty Images New Line Cinema Focus Films Fox Searchlight Pixar/Disney 1 of 30 Close expandIcon 1 30 Close 
 
 The dapper-con genre, which includes The Lady Eve and The Sting, with a brief recent revival in Now You See It, demands of its audience only a readiness to fall for the flimflam, as Nicky’s marks do. The big gamble in Focus: it’s a Will Smith movie that dares to be small. It leads its stars into swanky peril with a zillionaire gambler (B.D. Wong) and an Argentine race-car mogul (Rodrigo Santoro), in games the viewer is wise to trust no one. 
 
 Ficarra and Requa, who pulled off a more brazen act of sex and treachery in I Love You Philip Morris, here just want to have and provide a good time. Which they do. They’ll even take an R rating for the fun of some raunchy wit spouted by one of Nicky’s pals (Adrian Martinez). 
 
 And Robbie validated the filmmakers’ trust at the end of a long casting process. Suggesting a modern Grace Kelly who wears her libido on the outside, and is a bit more self-conscious in her scheming, Robbie is really closer to a high-end knockoff of the young Michelle Pfeiffer. But that’s O.K. too: it adds to the film’s playful sense that everything, including star quality, is a con. 
 
 Except for Smith, of course. He may not be the 21st-century Cary Grant — who could be? — but as a Hollywood charmer, he’s still the real deal. ||||| 'Focus’ review: Will Smith just stole $12 from your pocket 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Photo: Frank Masi / Frank Masi / Warner Bros. Pictures Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Image 1 of 4 Will Smith plays Nicky and Margot Robbie is Jess in “Focus.” Will Smith plays Nicky and Margot Robbie is Jess in “Focus.” Photo: Frank Masi / Frank Masi / Warner Bros. Pictures Image 2 of 4 Will Smith plays a big-time swindler, with Margot Robbie as his latest apprentice, in “Focus.” Will Smith plays a big-time swindler, with Margot Robbie as his latest apprentice, in “Focus.” Photo: Frank Masi / Frank Masi / Warner Bros. Pictures Image 3 of 4 Margot Robbie and Will Smith in “Focus.” Margot Robbie and Will Smith in “Focus.” Photo: Frank Masi / Frank Masi / Warner Bros. Pictures Image 4 of 4 Adrian Martinez plays a con artist in “Focus.” Adrian Martinez plays a con artist in “Focus.” Photo: Associated Press 'Focus’ review: Will Smith just stole $12 from your pocket 1 / 4 Back to Gallery 
 
 February is the time for movies that look slick and promising but turn out to have something major wrong with them; otherwise, they’d be opening in May. “Focus” fits right into that pattern, a movie about con artists that’s itself an elaborate con. 
 
 The movie’s con is that it’s showing us a secret underworld, something real that we’ve never seen or imagined, that it’s revealing how the big boys operate. But it’s not doing any of those things. “Focus” is ridiculous in every detail. It’s a movie with no truth that teaches nothing and shows nothing, that has only its audacity to recommend it. Once that’s realized, it’s possible to take it for what it is and enjoy it, a little. 
 
 Forget the con artists, and think of it as a movie about Will Smith’s jaded charm and about how Margot Robbie looks completely different with her hair up than she does with it down. Think of it as scenes disconnected from other scenes, which are amusing for their own sake but that have little to do with each other. Then you won’t be disappointed. 
 
 One scene in particular captures the strengths and weaknesses of “Focus.” Smith and Robbie are in a VIP box at a football game, making small bets with each other, and an Asian businessman asks if he can bet with them. As the stakes rise, from $10 into the multiple thousands, the businessman goes from seemingly innocuous to sinister, and the personal dynamic is fascinating. You can’t take your eyes off of BD Wong, who plays the businessman with an arresting mix of giddy playfulness and menace. 
 
 But the scene itself is absurd, not just far-fetched, but groan-out-loud ludicrous. And the resolution — that is, the explanation that comes afterward — only makes it worse. 
 
 Nicky (Smith) and Jess (Robbie) meet cute, with Jess trying to swindle him. When she realizes that she can’t cheat a cheater, that she has hooked the Yoda of crooks, she begs him to give her lessons in stealing. He proceeds to give her a tutorial on picking pockets. Apparently, it’s all about focus. 
 
 The first hint that the movie is just plain silly is Jess’ audition scene, in which she picks about a dozen wallets and assorted jewelry, in a series of intricately choreographed moves involving multiple accomplices. Pretty good for a first time out. The second hint comes when we see Nicky’s operation — a massive warehouse in which wallets and jewelry are coming in from multiple sources. For some reason, all these independent pickpockets feel the need to kick up to him. Maybe they owe him. Maybe he did for them what he did for Jess, taught them how to become masters of the craft in just one five-minute lesson. 
 
 Yet for all this, the nature of Nicky’s business remains vague; it seems to be whatever the script wants it be at any given moment. So, though we’re introduced to him as the Mozart of pickpocketing, we’re also to understand that he’s a swindler of international scope. Most of the film, in fact, takes place in Buenos Aires, with Nicky working a con for a major tycoon — but by this time, you don’t know what’s going on. You just know that nothing can be as it seems. That really means watching the movie waiting for the trick, which is not the same as being fooled. 
 
 There are some scattered good moments; for example, the disconcerting sound of race cars whizzing by outside, as two people converse in the track’s cafe. They sound like powerful mosquitoes. And Adrian Martinez has a couple of funny scenes as a socially maladroit con artist. 
 
 But the emotional core of the movie, the relationship between Nicky and Jess, lacks impact, mostly because you can’t believe a word that they say, but also because Smith is not a strong leading man. Smith’s idea of playing romance is to act cool, and his idea of playing cool is to act withdrawn and serious. That means the eclipse of the thing that made him a movie star in the first place, his personality. 
 
 Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle’s movie critic. E-mail: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle 
 
 Focus 
 
 Drama. Starring Will Smith and Margot Robbie. Directed by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra. (R. 104 minutes.) ||||| I Love You Phillip Morris 
 
 'I Love You Phillip Morris' review: Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor ham up prison romance 
 
 Handout 'I Love You Philip Morris' is based on a true story and stars Jim Carrey (r.) and Ewan McGregor (l.) as two prison inmates who fall in love. 
 
 A con man tries to make a life for himself and his lover. With Jim ­Carrey, Ewan McGregor. Directors: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa (1:50). R: Sexuality, language. At Lincoln Square, Chelsea Cinemas, Village 7. 
 
 
 
 Arriving some 10 months after it was due and feeling like an episode of "Three's Company" dressed in prison orange, "I Love You Phillip Morris" not only blasts gay stereotypes back decades, it could actually make people wish for a third Ace Ventura movie. Both of those are an accomplishment, though neither is a compliment. 
 
 Jim Carrey plays a closeted husband and father who gets into a car wreck, decides to live as an out gay man and runs up such a tab ("Being gay is expensive!") that he instigates financial frauds to make ends meet. In covering all this, Carrey tries to blend his more successful turns in serious satires ("The Truman Show," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") with his comic anarchy. But they cancel each other out, and what's left is a performance that evokes, in its charmless reserves of anger, such fidgety Carrey freaks as Ace, the Mask and the Riddler. 
 
 As for gay stereotypes: Though it glides in on a pretense of equality -- everyone deserves a romantic anti-establishment farce -- "Phillip Morris" uses a true story from the '90s as a catch-all, where the only thing that stands out is an incredibly mincing performance and a nudge-nudge sense of humor. 
 
 The mincing comes via Ewan McGregor, who as the title love interest is Steven Russell's (Carrey) soul mate. They meet in a Texas prison, where each is paying for white-collar crimes; once they're on the outside, the rambunctious Steven returns to his old flim-flammery, conning his way into boardrooms and corporate positions. 
 
 Phillip hates that side of Steven, and as much as he'd like to stand by his man -- as Steven's evangelical ex-wife (Leslie Mann) does -- he's shocked to find his beloved isn't even a lawyer, as he said. 
 
 Except everything Steven says sounds like a put-on, so the audience isn't surprised, despite a third-act twist that was daring for the real-life Russell and is handled well by writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, whose screenplay for 2003's "Bad Santa" was a far more successful tweaking of tradition. 
 
 Here they attempt to do more, and they do almost all of it badly. McGregor's vaudevillian turn, complete with small dog and a Southern accent best described as teenage Tennessee Williams, is distracting, as is Carrey's search for ways to accommodate his Gumby-ized flexibility. When he finds them, they're amusing but gratuitous, much like the movie's multiple prison escapes and excessive back-story. 
 
 Carrey is clearly hungry to wear a clown suit again. It's a shame he can't just be who he is and move on.
– Will Smith stars as Nicky, an established con man who takes on a new apprentice, Australian newcomer Margot Robbie's Jess, in Focus. They both love the con game, but who's playing who? Here's what critics are saying: Richard Corliss at Time is a fan. "The mix of longtime star and minx on the rise is one tasty element in the success of a movie that approaches the modest goals and effortless allure of a 60-year-old Hitchcock," he writes. Smith "takes a welcome break from glowering sci-fi roles" and writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa "deserve some credit in letting Will be Will in the star's first charm barrage since 2005's Hitch." Steven Rea at the Philadelphia Inquirer admits Smith "shows some of the movie-star wattage that's been missing from his recent pics. He charms." There's also "combustible chemistry" between Smith and Robbie, but the movie just "disappoints," Rea writes. "Even if you're willing to forgive its sinkhole plotholes and farthest-fetched conceits, the film ... ultimately makes no sense." Betsy Sharkey, on the other hand, says this "rom-com-con" is "an irresistible reminder of all the reasons we first fell for the Fresh Prince so many years ago." Writing at the Los Angeles Times, she notes the romantic role of Nicky fits Smith perfectly, while Robbie is "more than holding her own" as his match. "The scams are Rubik's Cube complicated, but what keeps you guessing is whether the romantic connection between Jess and Nicky is real or just another con." But Mick LaSalle at the San Francisco Chronicle isn't convinced. In a review titled "Will Smith just stole $12 from your pocket," he argues Focus is "ridiculous in every detail. It's a movie with no truth that teaches nothing and shows nothing, that has only its audacity to recommend it." Nicky and Jess lack "impact," partly because "Smith is not a strong leading man," he says. Viewers are left "waiting for the trick, which is not the same as being fooled."