Lady Vegas

Beth (Rebecca Hall) is stripping in private homes to make ends meet. On the advise of motel neighbor Holly (Laura Prepon), she goes to work for bookie Dink (Bruce Willis) and finds that she's actually quite good at it. She's good with numbers. People like dealing with her on the phone. And Dink likes her a lot. The problem is Dink's wife Tulip (Catherine Zeta-Jones) doesn't want him to like her so much. When Dink starts to lose money, things blow up.

When you consider the talents in front of and behind the camera, it's a wonder how things could go so wrong. Award winning director Stephen Frears is the biggest culprit. The script may need better jokes, but it's mainly Frears who couldn't extract any laughs from this. In the end, this is mostly his responsibility.

Rebecca Hall is doing a squeaky-voice fast-talking bobble head doll. It's completely fake, and leaves my head shaking. It doesn't fit her at all. If her mannerisms are meant to be funny, it got no laughs from me. Everybody else is doing a competent if not very impressive work. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Bruce Willis could have been an explosive couple but they're not. The only interesting acting comes from Vince Vaughn who plays a wildman bookie.

Not much goes right in this movie. It is absolutely not funny. It is watchable, but afterward I wonder why I watched it.

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.

The pull of this film for me was the cast; Bruce Willis, Joshua Jackson, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Vince Vaughan... and that it looked a funny premise. I didn't realise it was based on a true story - the story of Beth (Beth Raymer) who leaves small town America to make a life for herself in the big city, bright lights of Vegas.

I always enjoy stories where girls build themselves up from nothing, doing whatever it takes and I liked Beth's outlook on life well played by Rebecca Hall light-heartedly and convincingly. Her character was flighty and silly, and it is nice to see such a story where horrible things didn't happen to her (lucky!) Other than the language in this film (the worst of which is from the Welsh lips of Ms Zeta-Jones, almost unrecognisable as American, Tulip both in terms of look and character) it's pretty innocent, some topless sunbathing excepting. Bruce Willis wasn't so Bruce Willis as usual and I liked his wayward yet lovable character and he brought some much needed contour to otherwise quite flat performances. During the film I did wonder why everyone was so one-dimensional but as it's a true story, they were I suppose just going with the story that happened - some of the reactions people had were unexplained, as were Beth's seemingly easy transitions. The gorgeous and talented Joshua Jackson was under-utilised in this film as an actor but seeing as it was a character-based biopic there's not much that could be done about that. Vince Vaughan managed to be exactly who he usually is in films, and Laura Prepon as Holly had a good, small part character role which she did really well in.

The film is about gambling so I didn't understand all that went on but there were moments where it was quite tense, given what was being done was illegal, but the end was predictable but as it's a true story why shouldn't it be? You cared enough about the characters that you did want a happy ending and it's nice that Beth's good personality and sunny disposition wins out and all is well. As films go - biopic aside - it's not that great as it wasn't particularly challenging or deep, and the main character's antics were naïve and rather silly, so you find her a little annoying, but she was plucky and from the point of view of the real person she did very well for herself. It is, what it is. It entertained for an hour or so but I'm glad I didn't see it at the cinema as I would have been disappointed as it wasn't as funny as I expected. It's definitely an average, middle of the road standard film on all counts; screenplay, direction and performances but it's worth watching.

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.

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.