Dir: Gary Ross. Cast: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter, Richard Armitage, Elliott Gould, 12A cert, 110 mins

Time’s up on all-male heist shenanigans in Ocean’s Eight, which proves that Y chromosomes in a glitzy, star-led ensemble caper are thoroughly surplus to requirements.

What else does the film prove? That Sandra Bullock is just as fit to front an Ocean’s film as George Clooney, if not rather more so? That Anne Hathaway’s comic skills and game self-parody are well worth showcasing in bitchy roles? That Cate Blanchett absolutely rocks in cheetah-print coats and biker leathers?

All of this, handily. It doesn’t prove that Clooney’s Danny Ocean is dead, but it pretends he is, in circumstances unexplained, when his sister Debbie (Bullock) sob-stories her way out of prison at the start.

The point is: she’s our substitute. And her attitude to small- and medium-scale larceny is not quite the same as Danny’s watchful waiting game. Hours after waltzing through the gate of that jail, where she’s spent five years paying a seething penance for art fraud, she’s back in business with some high-end shoplifting.

Speaking of which, how does a $150m diamond necklace sound? Getting this up from Cartier’s vaults requires a tool kit far more unique than just your usual bag of explosives and drills. It needs Anne Hathaway’s neck. She’s an entitled Hollywood diva, Daphne Kluger, whose headline appearance at New York’s Met Gala is the opportunity Debbie has been waiting for.

The key partner in this crime, though, is not the oblivious Daphne, but Debbie’s old associate Lou (Blanchett), a bad-ass club fixer who’s reluctant to her get hands dirty.

And so the gang, in customary fashion, comes together, adding bespoke pieces of the jigsaw one at a time. First they need a once-reputable fashion designer (Helena Bonham Carter, all tragic frizz and Dublin accent) to bag the commission and incorporate the necklace into Daphne’s ensemble. A diamond expert (Mindy Kaling), pickpocket (the rapper Awkwafina), and hacker extraordinaire (Rihanna, not looking energised) are next on the list, and a social planner (Sarah Paulson) has to make certain that Daphne’s seated right where they need her.

Sarah Paulson, Sandra Bullock and Rihanna in Ocean's 8

The fun of this particular plan, which is at least as promising in the set-up phase as any of its franchise bedfellows, is how alarmingly public it is. They have to get the necklace off of Daphne, while she’s sitting at a table near Katie Holmes (the real one) and every camera in New York is trained their way.

There’s no getting around the fact that the movie peaks in this fleet and enjoyable section, which ought to be a climax but somehow isn’t. After that, a lot of the sure-footed development gets scratched out. There’s a lot of fuss about a magnet that’s needed to remove the necklace... but wait, the security guys later accept it just having fallen off?

Listing further plot holes would only be spoiling the elements that do work. Blanchett gets one delightfully neat and tidy job to perform in a kitchen, partly because there’s no one who wouldn’t believe her as a jet-set nutritionist. Your growing concern, though, is whether writer-director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, Pleasantville), not quite as wily as a Steven Soderbergh, was really the man for this job – and not just on a gender basis.

Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett

It goes without saying that he gets an awful lot of assistance from his cast – milking their moments, and surely spit-balling their way through an average script as often as possible. Bullock’s impressive bond with an audience, giving us dry asides that feel like meta-commentaries, is as much of a boon as ever. Plus, there’s brassy music, by a never-better Daniel Pemberton, which beefs up the David Holmes grooves from the first trilogy, putting a lot of wind in the film’s sails.

More of a minus is James Corden, whose overeager turn as a wise-cracking insurance adjuster could have been a great chance for a more seasoned, preferably less effortful, cameo player.

The whole aftermath is a little duff, a lazy clean-up operation which leaves more loose ends flapping than it ties. Top-tier heist films – from this batch, Ocean’s Eleven is the only one – manage to build and build, outdoing themselves with each new flourish, every daredevil reveal. Ocean’s Eight dresses its cast to kill, jumps off the trapeze with all the usual moves, and then forgets about its encore.