Glück im Spiel

The advertisements for "Lucky You" made it out to be a romantic comedy but Drew Barrymore is hardly in the movie. The movie is mostly of guys playing poker.

If you are a big poker fan, you will probably going to like it. Everyone else will probably be bored. If you thought the scenes in "Casino Royal" of guys playing cards was exciting, you will really like this film.

Ten years ago Curtis Hanson made "L.A. Confidential," one of the greatest films of all time. Since then, he has made some decent films but none of them have been really great.

"Lucky You" is well made and has good production quality. Drew Barrymore and Robert Duvall are always good. Eric Bana is an okay actor but lacks charisma. It doesn't help that his character is a big time loser and a compulsive gambler.

"Lucky You" will be a big hit with spectator poker fans, but everyone else is likely to be disappointed.

(I just had to say that before anyone else!)

I don't know anything about poker, but I enjoyed this film all right.

The people in the audience who do understand the game were getting a lot more out of it than I did. They were oohing and ahhing and tensing up like they were at a real poker tournament.

I'm surprised Drew Barrymore took a supporting role like this. She's good and lovely as always (how come she still looks 20?), but doesn't get enough to do. Robert Downey Jr and Jean Smart are also woefully underused.

The film really belongs to Eric Bana and Robert Duvall. Eric is handsome and solid. And it's a real treat to watch an old pro like Duvall.

It's only a slight tale, but a pretty good one. I could tell from one of the first scenes how it was going to wind up. Hey, maybe I should take up poker.

Huck (Eric Bana) is a professional poker player on a losing streak. His near empty house in Las Vegas also sports a pool with no water. As he is pawning a camera and his mother's wedding ring, he is hoping for his luck to change. In truth, he is a great player but does not know when to walk away from a table or a bet. One night, after leaving the gambling establishments, he goes to a local watering hole and meets a nice looking lady named Billie (Drew Barrymore). As she is being pestered by a loser, Huck comes to rescue her from his attentions. They make a connection. However, Billie's sister (Debra Messing) persuades her sibling to walk away, saying she knows Huck well and that he is all hustle and no commitment. Yet, Huck persists and convinces Billie to go on a date After a lovely evening and night together, Huck promptly takes money from Billie's wallet to take to the gaming tables. Ouch. Oh, and Huck's father (Robert Duvall), a prize winning poker player, is back in town to compete in the high stakes games. Will Huck win big? And, will Billie ever speak to him again? This is a good movie with a few flaws. It has a somewhat slow pace and also suffers from some incredulity as far as Huck's poverty despite his obvious great talent for cards. Nevertheless, Bana is certainly a large part of why the film is so worthwhile, as his Huck is a very charismatic person, indeed. Barrymore is probably miscast as Billie, although that is not to say she performs badly, just nondescriptly, as the role does not call for a display of her comic abilities. Then, too, someone decided to give her the hair styles of a bowling alley queen and the costumes of a dork. On the other hand, and surprisingly, the Las Vegas setting looks gorgeous, even away from the sparkling lights. If you like Bana, and who the heck doesn't, you will not want to miss a showing of this movie. Anyone with a hankering for high-stakes poker will be perfectly enthralled as well.

Only the most die-hard poker fans will find much to cheer about in "Lucky You," a Freudian drama set in the high-stakes world of the Vegas strip.

Eric Bana ("Munich") and Robert Duvall star as Huck and L.C. Cheever, two world-class poker players with many unresolved father/son issues between them. Huck resents the fact that he's had to live virtually all his adult life in the shadow of his famous father who, with his constant carousing, stealing and gambling, made life a living hell for Huck's mother virtually till the day she died. What Huck doesn't realize - and this is where Doctor Freud comes in - is that he is pretty much following in his father's footsteps both in his choice of profession and his relations with women. Meanwhile, L.C. hangs out around the casinos and coffee shops of the city trying to reconcile with his boy, while at the same time, doling out unasked-for advice about how the young man should be living his life both at and away from the poker table. Drew Barrymore completes the cast as Billie Offer, a young, morally upright ingénue from Bakersfield who has come to Sin City to begin her career as a singer and who winds up falling under the spell of the ethically-challenged Huck. Or could it be that the beatific Billie is really an angel of the Lord come to lead the iniquitous Huck out of this modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah?

The scenes between Bana and Barrymore are probably the best in the film and one wishes that more time would have been spent developing that relationship instead of sitting around the poker table. For whenever the story moves into the casino, the movie stops dead in its tracks, proving once again that poker, by its very nature, makes for one of the least compelling sports ever to be depicted on film. Anyone without a thorough working knowledge of the ins and outs of Texas Hold'em, in particular, is going to find himself lost in all the arcane trivia of the poker-playing scenes (which take up quite a large chunk of the movie's overall running time, I might add). Even worse is the fact that the father/son angle is so clichéd and hackneyed at this point that even actors of the caliber of Bana and Duvall (and they are both excellent) can't be expected to really pull it off.

There are some quality elements in "Lucky You." Director Curtis Hanson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Roth, proves yet again - as he did in "LA Confidential" and "8 Mile" - that he knows how to extract the essence of a locale to build atmosphere and mood. Moreover, the interactions between Huck and Billie are often flavorful and intriguing (which is more than can be said for those between Huck and his dad). The performances are uniformly impressive, with Barrymore, in particular, showing a bit more range here than she has in most of her previous roles.

Hanson has populated his film with a number of real life poker playing celebrities, which may be of interest to the aficionados but won't mean much to the rest of us. Sad to say, but the lackluster "Lucky You" is unlikely to appeal to anyone not already passionate about professional poker - and unlikely to garner the sport itself many new fans.

If gambling and poker interests you, then you will love this film. Otherwise, it's too long and in some parts boring because there are so many long card playing scenes. Did the movie have to show so many hands of poker being played for us to follow the story? Eric Bana plays a gambler who wins some but loses a lot. His father, Robert Duval, is a world famous gambler. Duval is fabulous as usual in his role. Drew Barrymore plays the girl Bana pursues. He "borrows" money from her and gets in the dog house but alls well in the end. There are a few funny parts where his friend sets up silly wagers. Like staying in a bathroom and the whole run/golf bet. The climax is the world poker tournament and whether or not Bana can win it.

FINAL VERDICT: I like the actors in this, but I don't know anything about poker, so didn't follow that part with the checking and table tapping. A little too much of the technical stuff. The card playing should have been shorter. But I still recommend it if you like any of the actors.