Saturday, June 17, 2006

Just My Luck

Get a Room, Will Ya?!


The only Lindsay Lohan movie I had ever watched was Mean Girls (2004) on board a flight to Europe, and I thought it was a pretty entertaining chick flick. Herbie Fully Loaded somehow didn't appeal to me, so Just My Luck was next on the screens here. There's another little story too on how we picked this DVD in Petaling Jaya, KL, Malaysia, together with Scary Movie 4, and then donated it, but heck, that's another story for another day, and it really was just our luck that night of the purchase.

Just My Luck tells the story of the crossing of fated paths between an incredibly lucky girl, and a totally unlucky guy. In typical boy-meets-girl fashion, these 2 individuals will meet, and re-meet each other again in make-believably coincidental situations, and find in each other, the sparks of love. The introduction was quite neat, as we get acquainted with Ashley Albright (Lindsay Lohan), the walking good luck charm, and Jake Hardin (Chris Pine), a walking disaster with a knapsack full of emergency supplies to help him tide through the day.

One's a sassy PR consultant, the other a "bao-kar-liao" (takes care of everything) lowly worker cum cleaner at a bowler's, aspiring to make it big via his discovery of a Brit band, the McFlys. The couple meet anonymously at a masquerade ball, and a seemingly innocent kiss transfers all the luck on Ashley, to Chris. And so it follows that Ashley will try everything she can to get her luck back. Until her conscience starts to question just who might need the luck more.

The reversal of roles story isn't really new, only the medium and method are different. Like recent movies The Shaggy Dog, and even Lohan's own Freaky Friday, are movies that belong to the same story genre. So the question is, does this one work? Given the good looking cast, it should appeal to the youngsters who are fans of Lohan, or are attracted to the good looks of Chris Pine. Their chemistry worked well off each other, and you can feel their respective surprise and frustration as their lifestyles differ drastically.

There are plenty of situational comedy infused with a story like this, but most of them felt contrived. Towards the end, given that luck could swing the situation either way, some scenes seemed to be stuck in limbo way too long, waiting for that punchline to give it direction. Granted, being incredibly lucky already is stretching the plot a bit too thinly, so you'll be better off treating this movie like a childish fantasy. A typical date-safe movie enjoyable at certain points though, with the usual expected feel-good ending.

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