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Huck Cheever (Eric Bana) has spent his whole life gambling. The son of two-time World Poker Champion L. C. Cheever (Robert Duvall), Huck grew up playing poker with his dad at the kitchen table. But then, thanks to L. C.’s gambling, things fell apart in their family—and Huck has never been able to forgive his father for it.
Now, though, Huck’s turning into his father. He spends his days and nights playing poker—and everyone at the casino knows him by name. He’s good at reading his opponent, but he’s so compulsive that he ends up losing everything he makes. He’s in debt up to his eyeballs, but he keeps playing—both because he just can’t stop and because he needs $10,000 to buy himself a seat in the upcoming World Series of Poker. He’ll do anything to get the money—just so he can prove himself to his dad.
Though Huck’s attentive and compulsive at the poker table, he’s the exact opposite in life. So when he meets Billie (Drew Barrymore), a singer from California, he has no idea how to deal with his feelings for her.
Lucky You is supposed to be a touching drama about compulsive gamblers. But, unfortunately, there’s nothing all that touching about compulsive gamblers—or at least not these compulsive gamblers. Yes, Huck and L. C. have father/son issues, but the story doesn’t offer anything we haven’t seen before.
Though the marketing campaign portrays Lucky You as a romantic comedy, it’s not that, either. The female characters seem slapped on as an afterthought, in an attempt to attract a female audience. As a result, Barrymore’s character is as flat and uninteresting as they come. The audience gets to know very little about her, and her storyline feels forced.
Actually, any story this movie has feels forced and unnatural. But don’t worry—there’s not much of it. The two-hour runtime consists of approximately 30 minutes of story and 90 minutes of poker playing. Now, I’ve watched my share of poker on TV (enough to recognize poker pro Daniel Negreanu in the movie), but this is different. For one thing, the banter around the televised poker tables is actually more interesting than it is in the movie. And, on TV, when the players are quiet, there’s an announcer to discuss who has which cards and what the players are doing and why you’re supposed to care. In the movie, you only see Huck’s hand. Then you watch him stare down his opponents before placing his next bet. There’s very little dialogue—and there’s very little suspense. On TV, at least you don’t know who will win and who will lose. In the movie, though, you pretty much know what’s going to happen. And that makes for a whole lot of painfully predictable poker.
In the end, Lucky You doesn’t have much of an audience. Only hard-core poker fans will want to sit through all the poker—but I have a feeling that even the hard-core fans will find it long and tedious. Personally, I feel rather unlucky for having to sit through it.
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