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Luck (2022)
Apple goes the Disney Pixar route in 2022's Luck, a visually arresting but overly cute and overly complex story that, like most Disney Pixar features, offers a story that is hard to stay invested in and borrows too much from other movies, but features a terrific voice cast.
Sam Greenfield is an 18 year old orphan who has just aged out of the adoption system and been given a job and an apartment, separating her from her best friend at the group home, a little girl named Hazel, who is excited about a scheduled visit from a young couple who might be adopting Hazel. Sam has a disastrous first day at her new job but things start to look up when she gives half of her sandwich to a cat named Bob, who, in exchange, gives her a lucky penny. This penny changes Sam's life completely and decides she has to give it to Hazel to make sure she's adopted. Unfortunately, Sam loses the penny and when Bob says he doesn't have anymore, she follows Bob down a secret passageway leading Sam to the secret organizations of Good Luck and Bad Luck, where Sam seeks Bob's help in getting another penny for Hazel.
The screenwriters for this intricate animate adventure are the creatives forces behind films like Cars, Trolls, and Kung Fu Panda, films that I have not
seen, which might account for my confusion and occasional boredom with this film. Exposition setting up Sam as a person with terminal bad luck goes on way too long, though really she just appears to be a klutz. Once Sam gets to the land of Good Luck, the story starts to pick up but the way Bob fights Sam and everyone else in the story makes no sense. The theme of this movie seems to waffle between the theory that good and bad luck together and that there is no such thing as luck at all, but never completely commits to either theme. And in another Disney Pixar tradition, there are two too many endings.
There is no denying the technical mastery in the mounting of this story. The animation is gorgeous and beautifully detailed. Watch every moment in the story where the camera zooms in on Sam...the fur on the cat looks so realistic the viewer wants to reach out and stroke the creature. Or look at the scales on the hands of the dragon. So much detail went into the look of this movie, I wish the same kind of detail could have gone into the screenplay.
There is some great voice work with standout work from Whoopi Goldberg as the Captain, Jane Fonda as the Dragon, and especially Simon Pegg as Bob, but this one is too long and saccharine to bring it home properly.
Apple goes the Disney Pixar route in 2022's Luck, a visually arresting but overly cute and overly complex story that, like most Disney Pixar features, offers a story that is hard to stay invested in and borrows too much from other movies, but features a terrific voice cast.
Sam Greenfield is an 18 year old orphan who has just aged out of the adoption system and been given a job and an apartment, separating her from her best friend at the group home, a little girl named Hazel, who is excited about a scheduled visit from a young couple who might be adopting Hazel. Sam has a disastrous first day at her new job but things start to look up when she gives half of her sandwich to a cat named Bob, who, in exchange, gives her a lucky penny. This penny changes Sam's life completely and decides she has to give it to Hazel to make sure she's adopted. Unfortunately, Sam loses the penny and when Bob says he doesn't have anymore, she follows Bob down a secret passageway leading Sam to the secret organizations of Good Luck and Bad Luck, where Sam seeks Bob's help in getting another penny for Hazel.
The screenwriters for this intricate animate adventure are the creatives forces behind films like Cars, Trolls, and Kung Fu Panda, films that I have not
seen, which might account for my confusion and occasional boredom with this film. Exposition setting up Sam as a person with terminal bad luck goes on way too long, though really she just appears to be a klutz. Once Sam gets to the land of Good Luck, the story starts to pick up but the way Bob fights Sam and everyone else in the story makes no sense. The theme of this movie seems to waffle between the theory that good and bad luck together and that there is no such thing as luck at all, but never completely commits to either theme. And in another Disney Pixar tradition, there are two too many endings.
There is no denying the technical mastery in the mounting of this story. The animation is gorgeous and beautifully detailed. Watch every moment in the story where the camera zooms in on Sam...the fur on the cat looks so realistic the viewer wants to reach out and stroke the creature. Or look at the scales on the hands of the dragon. So much detail went into the look of this movie, I wish the same kind of detail could have gone into the screenplay.
There is some great voice work with standout work from Whoopi Goldberg as the Captain, Jane Fonda as the Dragon, and especially Simon Pegg as Bob, but this one is too long and saccharine to bring it home properly.