"You got it backwards, kid," poker legend L.C. Cheever (Robert Duvall) tells his wayward son Huck (Eric Bana). "You play cards the way you should live your life, and you lead your life the way you should play cards."
Since I'm not a personal friend of Curtis Hanson or Eric Roth, the two gentlemen who dreamed up Lucky You (Hanson also directed), I can't say whether they write Christmas cards the way they should write screenplays, but. . . well, you get the idea. Ostensibly a hard-hitting look at the emotional constipation of the professional gambler — a breed characterized by recklessness, compulsion, and an almost complete lack of empathy — this long-delayed film (key scenes were shot at the 2005 World Series of Poker) hammers home its banal message in dialogue so soap-opera direct that the poor actors all but wince in pain as they deliver it. (Often there's an uncomfortable pause, too: "Do I really have to say this?")
I know what some of you are thinking: "Who cares whether the dude wins Drew Barrymore's love or earns his daddy's respect? How's his game?"
Unfortunately, while Lucky You is jam-packed with cameos from real-life pros — most visible are Sammy Farha, John Hennigan, Barry Greenstein, and Jennifer Harman — none of them seems to have contributed any poker insight.
Huck has the best hand in every confrontation we see: When he wins, it's usually by picking off someone's stone bluff; when he loses, it's invariably because his opponent catches a miracle river card. More improbable still, the movie's sappy dramatic climax hinges on Huck's refusal to show his hole cards to the television camera at the World Series main event. (If individual players were allowed to veto the camera at will, there would be no televised poker, period.) Even the table talk here is often ludicrously overstated, with players delivering lengthy dissertations on the play of the entire hand, lest newbies in the audience be confused. Every good poker player knows that the most important skill is game selection. Choose another seat. — Mike D'Angelo