Movie Reviews

Review in a Hurry:  Director Curtis Hanson's long-delayed poker pic finally plays its hand, with Eric Bana as a Vegas gambler who has daddy issues and a crush on lounge-singer wannabe Drew Barrymore. Should you ante up? Nah, save your chips for a more exciting game.

The Bigger Picture:  Warner Bros. has taken a marketing gamble, betting their cutesy Lucky You trailers will attract the romantic-comedy crowd. But it's a bluff. Audiences expecting much heat between Bana and Barrymore—albeit both beautiful (just ask People magazine!)—will likely feel card-sharked. See, this Sin City-set story (using "story" loosely) is really more for poker fans, though I suspect even they'll be bored by this low-stakes drama.

Career gambler Bana may be a hotshot at the tables, but he's no winner at the relationship game. As his poker-legend papa Robert Duvall says, the kid plays cards the way he should live life and lives life the way he should play cards. Or something like that. (The film is full of such analogies and wisdom, if you wanna take notes.)

At the casinos, Bana tries to score $10,000 to secure a seat at the World Series of Poker. He wins some hands but loses others, including a few to Daddy Duvall, a tough ol' bird who's never given his boy a break.

At least Bana gets moral support from out-of-towner Barrymore, a gosh-oh-golly gal who warbles at dive bars and says silly stuff like, "I haven't had this much fun since junior high!" For some reason, these two hook up and then go through the expected relationship-subplot paces.

Lucky lumbers toward its tournament climax, with the inevitable father-son showdown, and the final game tediously plays out as if the movie has suddenly intercepted some poker marathon broadcast from ESPN2. Unlucky for you, you can't channel-surf away.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  After picking up enough poker lingo to impress friends, you can busy yourself counting the oddball cameos (including Robert Downey Jr. as a telephone scam artist) and wondering why the wonderful Jean Smart is wasted as a tourney finalist who never gets to say much except "Call" and "Fold." What's the deal?