Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Film review

'Just My Luck' an unfortunate waste

This Lindsay Lohan vehicle is a comedy lacking even one chuckle. The only thing in its favor is a likable cast.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published May 11, 2006

Within the first couple of minutes of Just My Luck, one of the main characters gets excrement smeared on him - not once, but twice.

By the end of the film, we have a pretty good idea how he must have felt because we have been subjected to a load of recycled waste.

Chris Pine, who co-stars with Lindsay Lohan in this horrific preteen comedy, gets himself cleaned up pretty quickly. It takes the audience a lot longer to wash away the distasteful memory of this pile of cinematic droppings.

Lohan is Ashley Albright, a Manhattan career gal so lucky that she accidentally wins contests she hasn't even entered. Rain stops whenever she goes outdoors. A movie star's dry cleaning accidentally gets delivered to her apartment just when she's wondering what to wear to an important party.

Pine is Jake Hardin, the anti-Ashley. He cleans toilets in a bowling alley for a living and manages a rock band that is getting nowhere. He gets arrested for things he didn't do. When he finds a coin in the gutter, he bends down to pick it up and splits his pants.

He sneaks into a costume party that Ashley has arranged and ends up kissing her. From that moment on, their fortunes are reversed. He's lucky and she's not.

That's it. That's the whole movie. The first half is a series of scenes with bad things happening to Jake and good things happening to Ashley. Then there's the kiss, and then there's a bunch of scenes in which he's blessed and she's cursed.

There's not a single chuckle in the entire film. Not one.

But the cast (including the two leads, Samaire Armstrong and Bree Turner as Ashley's cutesy friends and Faizon Love as a music industry mogul) is fairly appealing. And Petrie had the good sense to cast an actual and enjoyable pop-rock band - a British group called McFly that has had some notable success in England - as Jake's buddies. They don't play much, but they play some bright songs well and they're not bad actors.

But you have to wonder why such talented actors and musicians would subject themselves to this garbage, and why they'd subject us to it.

Just My Luck

Grade: D-

Director: Donald Petrie

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Chris Pine, Samaire Armstrong, Bree Turner, Faizon Love

Screenplay: I . Marlene King and Amy B. Harris

Rating: PG-13; brief sexual reference

Running time: 110 min.

[Last modified May 10, 2006, 11:52:13]