Una ragazza a Las Vegas

"When you put your money down you can not pick and choose what bets count, cause all of your bets are yours. All of them, win or lose." Beth (Hall) is a small town girl who's dream is to be a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas. After moving there she gets a job in sports betting with Dink (Willis). When she turns out to be a genius at it everyone is impressed, especially the temperamental Dink who thinks he has the perfect assistant. There are some movies that are important and should be seen to change things. There are others that are huge effects movies that are fun to watch but have no real substance. Then there are movies like this, extremely entertaining and fun from beginning to end. The cast is great and the plot is good. The best way to describe the movie is more of a comedy version of Two For The Money. Overall, there really is nothing else to say other then this movie is just 100% fun from beginning to end. I recommend this as a movie you can just put in and not think about. A movie you can watch over and over. I surprisingly give it an A-.

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.

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.

"Lay the Favorite" has many dissenters, most complaining that it's completely unbelievable. It's true, it is. Beth (Rebecca Hall) is a ditzy bimbo who quits her job as a stripper and moves to Las Vegas to become a cocktail waitress. A great idea! Instead, as soon as she arrives, she gets a very lucrative job as a sports bettor for a bookie who isn't a bookie since bookmaking is illegal. She's a genius with numbers and words.

She's also capable of getting guys to do whatever they think she wants. They need to do the thinking since she's too dumb to even know what she wants. The kicker to this story of an over-sexed, ditzy bimbo, numbers genius, sports-betting millionaire, is that it's a true story. I decided to watch the YouTube video of the real Beth Raymer reading from her memoir which this film is based on to see if Hall accurately captured her varying characteristics. And she did. She does the hair twirl and the dumb girl giggle as she describes the kings of sports gambling giving her job after job after job.

I'm one of the few who liked Rebecca Hall in this. So different from her usual indie fare. She has to ooze sex and play beautiful even though she has never really been described that way before. But in order to like this movie at all, you need to care about this floozy. Other than her ridiculous free ride through life, nothing really interesting happens to her.

Her first job in Vegas is with Dink (Bruce Willis) who owns Dink Inc. She loves him, he loves her … mind? Yeah, right. Apparently he does. So when she gets herself in trouble along with a nice, smart successful guy (Joshua Jackson) who doesn't seem to mind throwing his life away for her, he comes to the rescue.

Personally, I found Hall's sexy naiveté and Willis' extreme gambling entertaining enough to keep watching. However, the movie doesn't seem to play the unfortunate reality that this is a true story for laughs. When there's a story too unbelievable to be true then you should be making fun of everybody who allowed it to occur, instead the film just wanted the audience to go along for a fun ride. It is somewhat fun, it's also very unbelievable, and ultimately, pretty stupid.

Who Might Like This: Anybody who likes seeing ditzy bimbos succeed in life; people who like watching unbelievably true stories; fans of Rebecca Hall.

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.