Lucky Numbers Review
by "Harvey S. Karten" (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)November 4th, 2000
LUCKY NUMBERS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
Paramount Pictures
Director: Nora Ephron
Writer: Adam Resnick
Cast: John Travolta, Lisa Kudrow, Tim Roth, Ed O'Neill, Michael Rapaport, Bill Pullman
Some decades ago, I thought that famous actors and TV stars were not really people like the ones you see every day on the street and assumed, therefore, that they did not have the usual needs and wants. I was puzzled, then, by the articles that filled the pages in the supermarket tabloids, particularly the most popular magazine of its time, "Confidential," which talked incessantly about the marriages and divorces of Hollywood personalities. Somehow I believed that celebrities filled up their lives with their work and had no time or inclinations for the usual domestic adventures that most of us took for granted, nor did they use their money for their own trivial pursuits separate from what they needed for their careers. Had I seen "Lucky Numbers" thirty years ago, I might have given up that image, because in Nora Ephron's new comedy, scripted by Adam Resnick, a television personality acclaimed by just about everyone in his area of Pennsylvania is famous enough, but he is perpetually in debt, regularly thinking up business schemes to create personal wealth, and dependent on the pleasures of the bed provided for him by yet another TV celebrity.
With "Lucky Numbers," Nora Ephron no longer capitalizes on her signature efforts such as the airy, romantic, laugh-out- loud comedy "When Harry Met Sally" and the milder but captivating "You've Got Mail," nor does she exploit the quirkiness of her box-office flop "Michael," which showed that an angel might be scruffy and randy but could still perform heartwarming miracles during a periodic sojourn to earth. Instead, Ephron has dished up an unfunny caper story filled with sloppy acting by John Travolta, a gruesome script for the usually whimsical Bill Pullman, and a moronic and repetitive set of thuggish actions for Michael Rapaport. Were Tim Roth not available for the side role of a malefactor's counselor, "Lucky Numbers" would have been a thoroughly unamusing
yarn.
If one thing could be said in the picture's favor, the narrative does show us that some of the most confident, popular, hale-fellows-well-met that appear on the tube are thoroughly stupid and self-destructive when not basking in the limelight of the studios or the adulation of the crowds who bestow endless praise upon them. In the role of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania TV weatherman Russ Richards--who when we first meet him believes he has everything--John Travolta heads gleefully from home to his private space in the parking lot of station WTPA, puts on a show, and is regularly petitioned for snapshots by his fans who apparently like the guy's friendly but cartoonish manner while reporting the day's clime. In debt for bad investments (currently a large store selling snowmobiles which languish because of a dearth of snow), he receives advice from his buddy, Gig (Tim Roth), to team up on a scam with Crystal Latroy (Lisa Kudrow). Crystal, who has a gorgeous body to which she allows access to both her boss, Dick Simmons (Ed O'Neill) and to Richards, is responsible for drawing the numbers for the Pennsylvania lottery on the same network that employs Richards. Together, Crystal and Russ concoct a scheme involving Crystal's dim-witted, asthmatic uncle
Walter (Michael Moore) to fix the drawing so that the six million dollar jackpot would be awarded to them, but through a series of mishaps easily avoidable if the perps had half a brain between them, they are hit upon but a succession of thugs for a share of the booty.
When a sometimes amusing script is wrecked by a director whose sense of comic timing is off, the result is a flat piece of work that wastes the talent of such notables as Lisa Kudrow (who displayed her broad range in "The Opposite of Sex" but who this time around simply mouths obscenities), and Michael Rapaport (amusing enough when in the hands of Woody Allen but who now performs as an airheaded thug who commits mayhem with celebrity baseball bats). To nobody's good luck, this picture plays strictly by the numbers.
Rated R. Running time: 104 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, [email protected]
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