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Written by Steve Warren
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Friday, 04 May 2007 |
Draw Drew Drawn-out Poker
If Freud really said there are no coincidences, he must have been looking ahead
to the release of Lucky You. After postponing
it several times (usually a sign of a bomb) Warner Bros. Pictures, a division
of Time Warner, opened it the same week Drew Barrymore graced the cover of Time
Warner’s People magazine.
 The famous painting, 'Humans Playing Poker.'
Barrymore is only a supporting actress in what is advertised as a romantic
drama. The romance between protagonist Huck Cheever (Eric Bana) and lounge
singer Billie Offer (Barrymore) is but one facet of the story. Huck’s
relationship with his father, L.C. (Robert Duvall), is at least as important.
The long climactic section, in which Barrymore only has one brief reaction
shot, takes place at the 2003 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
Huck is a pretty dodgy hero. He’s a compulsive gambler, the kind known in Vegas
as a “blaster,” because he always goes for broke. “I only bet on my skills
against the skills of other people,” he boasts; but while he’s good at reading his
fellow gamblers he lets his emotions take over when it comes to betting. He
knows when to hold ‘em but not when to fold ‘em.
He meets Billie when she’s just arrived in town to visit her sister Suzanne
(Debra Messing), one of Huck’s countless exes. One of Billie’s cute
affectations is that she reads her fortune cookie at the beginning of a Chinese
dinner instead of waiting for dessert. This is appropriate because most of her
dialogue sounds like it comes from fortune cookies: “I think everybody’s trying
not to be lonely.”
OK, she’s new in town and doesn’t know much about gamblers; but the first time
they sleep together Huck gets up, cleans out her purse while she sleeps and
heads for the casino, where he loses it all. Later he tells her he thinks they
have a chance for “something special,” and she forgives him. Will Huck really
be lucky at love and lucky at cards? If you want these two to wind up together,
there are two words to describe you: a man.
One reason it takes two hours to tell a simple story is that director Curtis
Hanson has fleshed it out with quirky stuff about gamblers and other Vegas
types. Robert Downey Jr. has one scene as a telephone scam artist Huck tries to
borrow money from. The fabulous Jean Smart has a nothing role as a poker player.
Horatio Sanz and Saverio Guerra are guys who will bet on anything. Guerra is
sporting breast implants on a bet and considering whether to accept the
challenge to live in a public rest room for a month.
Instead of the usual Rat Pack music much of the Lucky You soundtrack is country- or folk-tinged. In another
non-coincidence Bob Dylan’s name is seen on advertising cards atop taxis and he
sings an original song behind the closing credits.
Lucky You is never really awful but
it’s never really good either. If Warners had rolled the dice and screened it
for critics more than two days before the opening I might have been fooled into
thinking it’s better than it is. No one else who sees it is likely to be
fooled.
Steve Warren is a local actor and film reviewer. His
reviews can also be seen weekly in the Sunday Paper.
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