Lucky You

Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: May 4, 2007

6.5	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 21 Ratings

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MarkB.May 9, 2007

Compulsive drinking, drugging and gambling are all addictions, but there are reasons why the first two have provided the bases for many more memorable movies than the third. Texas Hold 'Em junkies and Bravo-TV programmers will contest Compulsive drinking, drugging and gambling are all addictions, but there are reasons why the first two have provided the bases for many more memorable movies than the third. Texas Hold 'Em junkies and Bravo-TV programmers will contest this, but images of poker-faced cardsharps betting the farm on one final hand just don't carry the visual punch of, say, Ray Milland walking a hundred blocks trying to hock his typewriter to buy booze, or Jack Lemmon demolishing his father-in-law's greenhouse in search of a hidden bottle. In Lucky You, Eric Bana (Hulk, Munich) is playing an obvious victim of gambling addiction (when you've gambled away all your furniture and bad guys with big muscles drop in at all hours to throw you into an empty pool, how can you NOT be?) but cowriter/ director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) deals with this issue by NOT dealing with it. By disingenuously pretending there's no problem at all, Lucky You willfully tosses aside some potentially intriguing dark material (which Hanson of all people should've been more than able to handle), instead pulling laborious triple duty as a father-son drama, a Big Game movie and a romcom. (Gee. Haven't we seen ENOUGH examples of each of those lately?) Since I know little about poker and care less, I'll give this a benefit-of-the-doubt yellow score, but Lucky You is truly wretched, a prime example of one of those inexplicable misfires that, for reasons that could range from directorial egomania to rampant studio interference with all stops in between, inevitably litters virtually every good writer-director's resume. Performances are wildly uneven, with Bana managing to be so colorless that I actually forgot what he sounded like when watching scenes he wasn't in, Robert Duvall delivering a surprisingly third-rate rehash of some of his past great performances as Bana's dad (himself a champion poker player) and Horatio Sanz, one of Saturday Night Live's most annoying and unfunny co-stars ever playing one of Bana's gambling buddies and NOT improving with age. On the other hand, Jean Smart (of TV's Designing Women), though almost totally wasted (most of her dialogue seems to have been edited out of the final cut with a chainsaw) as another contender, still gets in a few piquant reaction shots, while Charles Martin Smith, here as in American Graffiti and The Untouchables, cements his reputation as one of those wonderful character actors that's always a joy to see. Drew Barrymore is as charming and irresistable here as she was in 2007's earlier Music & Lyrics, even though here she's more of an artificial appendage than a vital organ. (And three cheers, for once, to People magazine for, in choosing her as the Most Beautiful Woman of 2007, opting for natural warmth and sweetness over Botox, bulimia and silicone!) Unfortunately, Hanson and his make-up/ hair crew make the fairly jaw-dropping decision of darkening Barrymore's hair, which carries the side effect of making her and Bana look like brother and sister, which in turn caused me to while away much of the movie's running time dredging up every unfair, tasteless joke I could think of involving U. S. states with large backwoods populations. (When you're watching a movie that climaxes with a poker tournament that you can accurately predict the winner of as soon as all the competitors take their seats, you gotta do SOMETHING to stay awake!) Lucky You has been on the Warner Bros. shelf for about two years, and when after much procrastination they finally decided to dribble it out on the same opening weekend as Spider-Man 3 (otherwise known as the "Throw The Bunny Rabbit Directly In The Path Of The Speeding Train" strategy) so they'd have an instant excuse for the inevitable box office slaughter to follow, I originally saw this marketing ploy as corporate cowardice at its worst. Now, having actually SEEN the movie in question, I have to do a 180-degree turnaround and commend Warner Bros. for performing what can best be described as an extremely compassionate mercy killing.… Expand

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ChadS.May 11, 2007

Since the weakest part of "Lucky You" is the romance between Huck(Eric Bana) and Billie(Drew Barrymore), it's of some small consolation that we're not sure if the aspiring lounge singer truly loves the high-stakes poker player. Since the weakest part of "Lucky You" is the romance between Huck(Eric Bana) and Billie(Drew Barrymore), it's of some small consolation that we're not sure if the aspiring lounge singer truly loves the high-stakes poker player. Their final scene together might be more subversive than it plays. Huck is so nonchalant about money, he assumes that everybody(including his girlfriend) is the same way. Huck never seems too keyed up about winning two-and-a-half-million dollars, so why should we? Since Robert Duvall is a better actor than Bana(Are we all in agreement on this one, folks?), why not tell the story from his perspective? If the filmmaker pared him up with Michelle(Jean Smart), then maybe we'd have a livelier film. If chess can be made to look exciting(Steven Zallian's "Searching for Bobby Fischer"), poker should be a breeze; especially if the sport is photographed by a guy who convinced us that Eminem could act. Maybe the filmmaker intentionally drained the fun out of poker to reflect how the sport has now become so respectable, it lost that outlaw spirit somewhere along the way from its roots in the backrooms of Vegas to the bland environs of our living rooms(thanks to ESPN). Huck seems depressed. We're depressed. "Lucky You" needed a more colorful protagonist.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful