Lucky You movie review (spoilers)

[DeathDonkey]

Crossposted this from my blog:

Lucky You if you avoid this movie

I went to see Lucky You tonight (spoilers will follow), as I am a poker fanboy and my wife loves romantic comedies and Drew Barrymore. Impressively, we both left disappointed. Lucky You portrays itself to be a romantic comedy loosely about a professional poker player, Huck, trying to find true love (that was my impression from the trailers anyway), but really the movie is about a degenerate gambler who hates his dad and Barrymore plays "random distraction girl". To my wife's chagrine, Drew Barrymore's character, Billy (Billie?) was rarely featured. The scenes she appeared in were among the best in the movie, actually, with a funny scene occurring where our "hero" is trying to teach Billy how to play hold'em and her innocent, carefree attitude at the table costs Huck some money.

Of course our poker hero only brought her to the table because he couldn't afford the buyin and she happened to think giving him $1000 to play with would make for a fun first date. This was my biggest problem with the movie - Huck is a degenerate gambling addict, and is completely unlikable. He manages to steal, cheat, go broke, and be an all-around [censored] at the poker table (under the guise of the movie showing us the "war on the felt" that occurs in poker). The only thing Huck is good at is taking a few hundred bucks and turning it into $10,000 or so within a few hours, rapidly moving up stakes at the prominently featured Bellagio poker room. Of course, he goes broke every time in the big game, usually to his father, a respected and renowned poker champion who wasn't always in control. Dad made some bad decisions when he was young that scarred Huck for life, and now Huck hates the man but can never beat him, or manage to listen to his useful advice. Huck's father is supposed to be the villain in the movie, but he is actually the most likable character in my opinion, as he plays cards well, manages to be nice to people and not go broke every 36 hours. Also the actor who played him did a great job (I'm too lazy to look up his name), though I thought Drew Barrymore managed to not suck in the scenes she was featured in, of which there were too few.

All comes to a head at the 2003 WSOP main event, where Huck and his dad meet at the final table, along with a cast of celebrity pro poker players, and the token "internet kid" who is playing in his first live event. Lucky You actually does a good job of making legitimate poker references - clearly they had someone on the writing or editing staff who knows his poker. Other than the standard ridiculous cold decks, the poker situations were fairly reasonable and a lot of attention was paid to the details. I loved that almost all the movie appeared to be filmed on location in Vegas, often in the Bellagio or on the strip. I loved the celebrity poker player cameos, including a few great lines by Sammy Farha and Jason Lester (who I predict almost no one will realize is a celebrity poker player cameo when they watch the movie).

Drew Barrymore is all but forgotten as we wait and see if Huck and his father can work out their differences over the biggest stage in poker. Of course they will, as the guy really isn't such a monster, and maybe he can teach Huck how not to lose that six figure WSOP score in those big bad cash games within a week. Of course we are supposed to be thrilled that Huck solved his financial woes, his family woes, and got the girl, all while intentionally mucking the best hand at showdown to knock himself out in 3rd place (don't even try and ask), but all I could really think when the credits rolled was "another degenerate fish about to take his score to the big cash games and go broke again - LOL donkaments."

-DeathDonkey