Canadian half comedy mixes first loves of gambling, hockey and girls–perhaps not in that order.
As Luck would have it, this newest Canadian heritage piece thankfully contains no Barenaked Ladies or Tragically Hip, instead we have plenty of other maple leaf references as in the old Molson beer bottles-the ones we used to steal sips from as a kid, play-by-play stock footage of the greatest goals in hockey history and a sampling of indie babe-actress Sarah Polley (My Life Without Me). Although the inspiration behind this small Canuck production will strike a cord for some, the manner in which the material is utilized comes off as less than inspiring; never truly getting the tone of the era or the personal down-in-the-dumps spirit right with a rather bland semi-adventurous tale of misguided youth with sideburns.
Director Peter Wellington’s Luck is a piece of Canadiana where a lot of annoying “eh’s†and “triple A’s†(apparently, in recent films Canadian’s have a social drinking problem) figure prominently within the make-up of the text. Sometimes narrated by the central figure in Luke Kirby (Mambo Italiano) who plays a Ferris Bueller type of character, however, doesn’t benefit from having the same fate as the Broderick character. Paralyzed by his inability to make decisions, he lets the girl in his life slip away and thus every single other move he makes carries the same appearance and the same sort of shell-shocked look of horror that the Team Canada had in the opening of the 1972 hockey tournament. Comically tying the fate of the protagonist with the final score of the final game, the subplots range between pissed off lone-sharks, undependable buddies and angry parents showing that the young man’s funeral seems imminent.
Though it seems like a novel idea of juxtaposing this important piece of history with an individual’s personal past-it seems less compassionate than the overdone U.S bravery in another the recently released hockey movie with Miracle. With grey tones and pale yellow indoor shots, it appears as if Wellington is not sure what tone to give the film, serious more dramatic sequences don’t especially jive well with the comedic elements.
A better sense of nostalgia within the script was recently visited with Good Bye, Lenin!, but here it seems like a side note where we watch people watching the tube having the 3 or 4 common reactions that people have when watching sports instead of the true passion and frenzied atmosphere of that moment in 1972. In the end we don’t care about the main character, where he ends up or if he gets the girl-Polley’s performance is more of a guest spot nature. Perhaps a better commercial move would have been to set the film up against the release of Miracle, but instead this coincides with another Polley release in the un-indie zombie flick Dawn of the Dead.
Luck is not even good medicine for homesick Canadian actors in the city of angels, it has a couple good moments-which can be counted on one hand, basically this gets a 5 minute major for delay of game and a game misconduct for utter boredom.
