Lucky You
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 4 minutes
Directed by: Curtis Hanson
Starring:
Eric Bana - Huck Cheever
Drew Barrymore - Billie Offer
Robert Duvall - L.C. Cheever
Remember poker? For those of you without a recall of a few years ago, poker was hot. It was all over the ESPN, who had discovered that once you could see everybody’s hand, the dramatic appeal went through the roof…if the roof was slightly above home redecorating on HGTV. But then the poker craze passed but unfortunately someone left a movie back when it was still hot. That movie is Lucky You, a film that should have all the ingredients for success: solid writer/director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), Eric Bana, Robert Duvall, and poker is exciting (or at least I think so, but I used to play Magic: The Gathering and if you don’t know what that is, congratulations because you are automatically out of my league).
Unfortunately the film is two hours long and about an hour and fifteen minutes is the following: Huck (Bana) is a card player and he’s good except he’s self-destructive and ends up always losing the money he wins. This self-destructive pattern forces him to pawn, barter, steal, and do everything short of crawling into a backroom with a drunken Japanese businessman for an undisclosed sum. But he needs $10,000 so he can enter the World Series of Poker (which apparently has no cut-off date for registration) and prove to his daddy (Duvall) that he’s a better man and a better poker player. He does this through the power of falling in love with Drew Barrymore, who holds the title of “Completely Non-Threatening Girlfriend Material”. See, when you take your date to a movie like this and you see Drew Barrymore, your date can “ooh” and “aah” over how hunky a guy like Bana is, but she’ll remain confident that you’ll be totally flaccid watching Barrymore and find your date more appealing by comparison.
There’s hardly a beat in Lucky You that isn’t telegraphed from a mile away. It made me long for either watching a documentary about a struggling poker player, where the outcome was uncertain or just to go home and watch Rounders. All the actors seem like their sleepwalking through their roles as they too have become tired of watching Huck kill time by winning and losing money and have his father randomly appear to taunt him (it eventually become unintentionally hilarious when you start to get the feeling that his dad is just stalking him and has nothing better to do with his time). Rather than risk a release, this film should have either remained on the shelf (the film takes place in 2003 so it’s been there for a while) or gone straight to video. Either way, it should just remain unwatched and collect dust.
Words by
Matt Goldberg
5.2.07