Lucky You

Lucky You, Curtis Hanson’s newest confection, has the feel of a misbegotten love affair. The movie doesn’t really work on any of the levels it should; its muddled thematic concerning fathers and sons and relationships and poker never feel authentic or especially compelling.

Eric Bana is Huck Cheever, a poker wiz just like his father, L.C. (Robert DuVall, terrific as always), who lives an unsatisfying Las Vegas existence   hustling also-rans and blowing big stakes on ill-conceived bets. Huck, who lives in a unfurnished house with a swimming pool, can turn $300 dollars into $10,000 on a routine night in a Vegas gambling den, but his self-destructive side, inherited from his wayward father, always leads him astray. Enter Billy Offer (Drew Barrymore), an aspiring singer from Bakersfield, who presents his second chance. As the World Series of Poker looms, the father-son duo will surely play out their Oedipal clichés on ESPN2.

Ms. Barrymore and Mr. Bana lack the chemistry or the script to involve us intimately in their romance, leaving us with bland and synthetic characters. The film’s genuine thrills are provided by Mr. Duvall, making the most of thin material by providing L.C. with a seasoned, yet delicate nature, an English teacher who found and lost himself in cards, who has come to the knowledge of the game’s proper place in life that his son sorely lacks. Longtime David Lynch cinematographer Peter Deming contributes a workmanlike palette and tones down his usual dynamism for Mr. Hanson’s relaxed style.

Mr. Hanson's movies have been award-worthy Hollywood prestige pictures for the better part of a decade, which casts the failure of Lucky You in a strange light. One senses the pull that the script certainly had on Hanson; he’s from all accounts an avid poker fan. Yet this by-the-numbers text, oddly enough by one of Hollywood’s most gifted screenwriters, Eric Roth (The Insider, Forrest Gump, The Good Shepard), never feels fresh nor sincerely performed and has certainly received   short shrift in an unspectacular April release. One hopes that Mr. Hanson, like his most interesting characters, returns to form after this misstep.

                                                             Brandon Harris