Lady Vegas

I'm generally a fan of comedies, and tend to prefer intelligent comedies to most dramas. Lay The Favorite wasn't funny, it wasn't entertaining and it felt so scattered that it was hard to follow any of the character's motivations. This felt like one of those movies where they just wanted to have a bunch of named stars so they could have fun on set. If the movie was allowed to be slightly slower or if they allowed the movie to be slightly longer it might have been able to gain footing but in it's current state by the time you've figured out why someone is doing something they're already four moves ahead of that. If you just want to see southern women depicted as ditsy sex objects and older men that wear Hawaiian shirts and gamble then this movie is for you.

If I hadn't seen Rebecca Hall in any other movie I guess I wouldn't have been amazed by the transformation or her performance in general in this movie. You really buy her ... let's call it naive nature, she puts on display here. Bruce Willis is pretty passive, which works in a way, but not throughout. Joshua and Catherine are not used in the best way possible, but the main focus is on Rebecca so that can be forgiven.

Story-wise, there is not that much exciting or new happening, the jokes are not always working, but the movie has a low budget charm to it (if you can accept that and not look at it as a star vehicle movie with a big budget). It's a nice little movie, that has more potential than it shows on screen.

Bruce Willis is everywhere it seems, from reprising his iconic role in John McClane for the fifth time, to being called on as the Original Joe in the G.I. Joe franchise. Soon he will be seen in yet another follow up film to Red, inspired by the graphic novel, and that pretty much sums up a busy release schedule in 2013. But here comes Lay the Favourite where he plays a character that's uniquely different from all of the rest so far - he doesn't wield a gun, and gone are the wisecracks. Instead, he's a serious gambler, so serious that he's made a business out of his passion, and doing so legally in the state of Nevada, USA.

But this is not the story about Bruce Willis' Dink, but rather, one that's purportedly based on the memoirs of an exotic dancer who made good while working under the tutelage of Dink, but not before some shenanigans that expectedly occur along the way, pulling in some serious lessons in life about nursing an addiction, whether the thrill of the win, or for the affections of someone. It's about Beth (Rebecca Hall), a freelance exotic dancer who decides that it's times up for her current career, and decided to embark on a new one as a casino cocktail waitress in Las Vegas.

Stroke of luck would have her meet Dink, who runs his own company, getting revenues from making bets against the odds (hence the title) for every conceivable sport and for every conceivable play. If you, like me, think that this is one film that will reveal to you the secrets to sports betting and making a career out of it, well, think again, as these scenes really just gloss over the bare basics, lest it be known as an elementary 101 instructional manual for professional gaming. But it is through this premise that life lessons get imparted, from knowing when to quit, not be greedy, to knowing how to operate within set limits.

And it's about discovering one's talents too. For Beth, her uncanny skill with numbers, and being the only female operative in Dink Inc puts her in good steed amongst Dink's peers in the industry, and for a while she personified Dink's good luck charm, until Dink's wife Tulip (Catherine Zeta-Jones) comes frowning especially when being threatened by a nubile upstart whom she can feel starting to bear some pangs of infatuation for her husband, who had lifted her self esteem. This leads to another automatic rote expectation of how romance will figure into the plot, with Jeremy (Joshua Jackson) being the goody two shoes boyfriend that Beth hooks up with.

Lay the Favourites tend to go all over the place narratively, with director Stephen Frears unable to keep a solid grasp on the story to keep it focused. It developed much like Beth's scatterbrain, hitting multiple plot points at the same time, and didn't fully develop their potential. There were solid moments when the story angled into a lessons learnt in how we sometimes bite the hand that feeds us. Its romance didn't go beyond the perfunctory, while the comedy seemed to be reined in for the most parts instead of letting it rip. Having Vince Vaughn play the chief antagonist guaranteed a riot of a time, until you realize that he's somewhat restrained in delivery of some of the best lines in the film that belonged to his character.

While this may not be Stephen Frears' best work, it still contained little takeaways through its themes, of heeding advice from experienced hands, and not be seduced by things that are too good to be true, because it's a high chance that they are. Bruce Willis may be playing against type here, but he does seem a tad uncomfortable in the role. Rebecca Hall however was at her element here as the trashy girl discovering her talents and herself, making good of her potential, but the rest of the supporting cast, such as Zeta-Jones who was really pedestrian, failed to keep up with her energy. Lay the Favourite is a valiant attempt that ultimately proved that the odds were stacked against its favour from the start.

Rebecca Hall does an excellent job as a naive bookie in Lay. The other actors, Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Vince Vaughn are great in their supporting roles, but.... This movie was poorly written: the jokes fall flat, the script doesn't develop enough so that the audience can care about the characters, the gambling is explained only enough so that gamblers can understand what the actors are doing and there is very little plot action that's not inside an office looking at TV screens with sports games on them. Stephen Frears, the director, has done some major work such as "the Queen," and "High Fidelity," and i would think he was brought in to save this, but it's shot so plainly, like a made for TV movie. I get the feeling that this was filmed in a couple weeks and everyone involved wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. I give it 3 out of 10 for Rebecca Hall's efforts and the fact that she comes off as incredibly sexy, but other then that, it's totally forgettable.

Until a friend suggested going to see this movie, I hadn't even heard of it, and other than what I gathered from skimming the synopsis in the cinema-foyer listings-leaflet -it seemed to be some kind of comedy, and starred Bruce Willis as a gambler-, I wasn't sure what it was about.

And now, after sitting through all ninety-four incoherent, enervating minutes of it, I'm still not sure. One of my friends, who is usually uncritical and easily entertained, said he thought that "The Tree of Life" made more sense than this film.

Unlike Terrence Malick's "metaphysical masterpiece" however, there is no confusion here as to what the subject matter is (it's the life of professional gamblers), what is confusing is how that subject matter is presented, and how the narrative is (or isn't) constructed around it. For example, what was the intended tone of the movie, what was the film-maker trying to convey? Was it supposed to be amusing? entertaining? or moving? were we supposed to be excited, or to feel intellectually stimulated? Who knows. My main emotional reaction to the film was a kind of repulsion, because I felt like I was being exploited, like the film was insulting my intelligence and my basic humanity. Like I might expect to feel if I'd been suckered into spending an evening feeding coins to a slot machine.

The first 10 minutes were slightly amusing to be fair, but after that that it just descends into complete mind-numbing absurdity. You might think Vince Vaughn would offer some comic-relief but, for the brief appearances he makes, he's just going through the motions (though it's still the most convincing and consistent performance of the movie).

There was no tension, or intrigue, at all, for the first seventy minutes. I mean nothing seems to really matter to any of the characters, they behave so unrealistically, and incoherently. And when things finally seem to get real and there is some adversity for the characters to face, you just don't care because you can't feel sympathy for such pantomime puppets as these.

They could have gone more into the details, the mechanics, of the gambling operation, that might have been interesting, but they thought it would be better to pad the story out with completely vapid romantic-interest scenes.

Maybe, with the attraction of Willis, Zeta-Jones, Vaughn, (and Rebecca Hall's legs), it was thought that such things as humour, narrative direction, consistency and pacing, character development, etc., were unnecessary.

After seeing the movie, I learned that it was adapted from a book, that at least goes some way towards explaining why there were so many undeveloped, seemingly irrelevant details, obviously included for the sake of those that have read it. For example, Holly (Laura Pripon's character) keeps warning Beth that she is becoming "one of us", in the book there might be context for this but when you watch the film you're just like "what is this I don't even...."

But, even for those that have read the book, maybe more-so, this film will only bemuse and bewilder. While I'm informed the book was written in a 'picaresque' -and no doubt droll (not to mention self-deprecating) style-, on screen, without the benefit of a narrator, this translates into characters, like Beth, who starts off as some kind of cartoon-airhead-bimbo-stripper, sunbathing with baby-oil on her back, ending up as an extraordinarily articulate, mathematical genius, who goes on to become a writer... Rebecca Hall was a bad choice.

And another thing, I couldn't help feeling that this film was not-too-subtly trying to indoctrinate me. Maybe I'm just paranoid but, beyond just the obvious product placements (nice Mercedes being driven by Bruce Willis' Mr. Nice character), it's like they're glamorizing the lifestyle, and completely glossing over any moral issues, and Beth just follows the money from Las Vegas to New York to Curaçao -are we supposed to admire that, to forget about community, and meaningful relationships, just go where the money is and keep working and consuming?-.

Whatever, I've wasted enough time on this drivel already, please heed my warning and don't waste yours.