You can bet on a happy ending in Lucky You, a mildly entertaining spin through the world of professional card players in Vegas.
The film is a mix of drama and romance, with plenty of high-stakes poker games played against a background of redemptive love.
Eric Bana stars in Lucky You as Huck, a hustler with a big chip on his shoulder and a bad relationship with his father. His dad (Robert Duvall) is a champion poker player -- better than Huck -- and the hostility between the two men goes back to Huck's childhood. Lucky You is really a father-son story that centres on Huck's life and emotional problems. He tends to squander everything he has, money and people included, and he spends every waking hour playing poker. He has no real friends.
Huck is consumed with winning the $10,000 he needs to secure a seat in an important poker game. He gets and loses the amount more than once, but he's desperate to compete against, and perhaps finally defeat, his father.
Into this madness strolls Drew Barrymore as Billie, a small-town girl with a heart of gold. It's the gold in her purse that interests Huck, who woos her only to help get himself some stake money at the poker table.
She dismisses him fast when she sees how obsessive he is about poker. Then, of course, she gives him another chance.
Barrymore brings a needed element of humanity to the story, but doesn't get to do much more than look adorable in close-ups and talk about honesty.
Likewise, there's a hefty support cast in this film that includes Debra Messing, Robert Downey Jr., Jean Smart, Phyllis Somerville, Charles Martin Smith and like that, but the actors flit in and out of the story with little impact.
What keeps you watching Lucky You is chemistry and card games. Bana and Barrymore are a good romantic pair, but that's no surprise.
Bana is an underrated actor, and Barrymore is so good she made Adam Sandler look okay in 50 First Dates, no mean feat.
The card games are risky, what with all the tension being conveyed through the facial expressions of people supposed to be keeping a poker face. Talk about nuance. You can see the problem.
To his credit, filmmaker Curtis Hanson keeps you interested regardless of what you know or don't know about poker. It is very difficult to film a card game and keep it engaging for a viewer; the filmmakers behind Casino Royale said that the card games in the movie were the most worrisome scenes to create and shoot.
Lucky You is uneven and over-long, but it has its moments -- particularly for fans of Drew Barrymore or Texas hold 'em. Or both.
(This film is rated PG)
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