Movie Review: Lucky Day (2019)

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A funny thing happened on my way to review writer-director Roger Avary's new movie Lucky Day. I watched his first picture Killing Zoe, which is a film I could've sworn I'd not only seen but also liked, only to discover that I hadn't and I didn't. In fact, I hated every aggressively nihilistic, dispiritingly misanthropic second of it.

Still, in Zoe, it's clear that Roger Avary — who won an Academy Award for his story contributions to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction screenplay — is a man of ideas both good and bad. And now with twenty-five years of life and professional experience at his disposal since Zoe, I was cautiously optimistic to see what he'd create next.

A far more polished endeavor, Lucky Day wastes little time before indulging in Francophile Avary's many creative whims, starting with an incongruous Days of Heaven style opening voice-over track performed in English by eight-year-old Beatrice (Ella Ryan Quinn), who then speaks nothing but French for the rest of the movie.

The ode to all things français continues as we're introduced to Crispin Glover's psychopathic French villain Luc who speaks with a hammy Pink Panther accent. Visibly relishing in the role, in his first scene, Glover teases out every ridiculous vowel like the sound of his own voice thrills him before we realize that Luc is a tornado looking to land.

Having just arrived in the United States, Luc is on the hunt for Luke Bracey's newly paroled safe-cracker Red, who's eager to just lay low with his French wife Chloe (Nina Dobrev), a pretentious artist who — much like Uma Thurman's wig in Pulp Fiction — wears her hair like Anna Karina did in the 1960s.

Filled with Pulpisms including surf rock and pet names like Honeybun and Bumblebee for Red's wife and daughter, while Lucky's Tarantinoesque elements feel about as fresh in 2019 as they did in the late 1990s after one new Pulp Fiction knockoff after another was released into theaters, the actors all have fun with it.

Trying to sell each new quirk as though it's the one crucial ingredient needed to make up an authentic personality we can believe in, on top of daughter Beatrice's insistence that she speak only French, Avary's film informs us that she can make herself invisible by touching her nose. Rounding out the eccentric cast of characters, we also encounter Dobrev's lecherous Harvey Weinsteinish boss Derek (David Hewlett) who tries to threaten her into sex while wearing a garish painted on mustache for no apparent reason. Two otherwise intriguing character ideas that might've paid off better if more time had been spent on them, the light whimsy of Beatrice versus the camp of Derek represent just two wild swings in tone for Day, which strives to reinvent itself in a different genre with each successive scene.

Though slightly more mature than Zoe, Lucky Day invokes some troubling racial stereotypes and caricatures throughout the film as it establishes a pattern of using minorities as a diversion to laugh at or kill off in absurd ways. Featuring stereotypical portrayals of African American, Asian, and Latino supporting characters, Avary's film is especially cruel to its female minorities and feels at times as if he's channeling Bret Easton Ellis' novels, which he adapted and directed twice in the early '00s. From an Asian woman whose last name sounds like a nickname for the male anatomy to an African American woman who is simply there to be used for offscreen sex and slaughtered within the very first act, as well as a Mexican woman who's racially insulted, humiliated, and faces a similar fate later on, Avary's (hopefully unintentional) bias is on full display.

Well shot and chopped, even though on a professional level, the quality of this film is light-years better than Avary's first, despite the sweet family unit at its core, Day's attitude remains just as mightily misanthropic, ugly, and misogynistic as, in addition to minorities, it takes a few cheap shots at cops, critics, and passersby along the way.

Evolving into a demented Wile E. Coyote cartoon, Avary temporarily redeems himself with a fast paced shootout and chase sequence that begins at a snooty art gallery and ends up in the basement of our main character's workplace (or front). An elaborately choreographed action set piece that wears its Raising Arizona style inspiration proudly in every frame, as Red's personal and professional worlds collide and his family ends up in Luc's crosshairs, Avary raises the tension and pulls us in an unpredictable high stakes pursuit. And while it does bode well for him as a writer-director of comedic action fare, unfortunately, in a film that finds him throwing absolutely everything at the wall to see what sticks, it's too little too late.

A modest improvement over Killing Zoe yet one that enjoys making its nonwhite and female characters the cruelest of punchlines, Lucky Day is bolstered by its accomplished cast, who commit to the picture like nobody's business. And honestly, for the (very few) moments it works, it works well. Yet in its current form, Avary appears to be making three very different movies at the same time — a cynically over-the-top ultraviolent thriller with a larger than life villain, a work of Madeleine-esque French child centric whimsy, and a subversive camp dramedy about a horned up sexual harasser in the workplace.

Needless to say, Roger Avary is a man with no shortage of stories up his sleeve. Although admirable indeed, Lucky Day makes you wish that idea man Avary would take a step back to see which of his ideas translate the best to the tale he's trying to tell and which ones make about as much sense as an English language voice-over in a crime film by a girl who speaks French and turns invisible.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: The Con is On (2018)

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Although it was inspired by The Palm Beach Story and A Fish Called Wanda, the latest film from The Devil You Know co-writer/director James Oakley (credited here as James Haslam) winds up proving why movies that great are few and far between.

After spending three years on the shelf (incidentally half the length his previous film toiled there before going directly to DVD), Haslam's heist comedy – first dubbed The Brits Are Coming is now finally seeing the flickering light of the silver screen following its completion in 2015.

Given a title that fans of Steve Martin's Bowfinger might remember as that movie's tagline, much like Bowfinger, The Con is On stacks the deck with a recognizable group of character actors who've made careers out of stealing scenes in films of all shapes and genres but it doesn't work half as well as it did in Martin's similarly L.A. set '99 comedy.

Having blown a bag full of drug money that they were supposed to pass along to a fellow crook on a night of drunken gambling instead, married con artists Harriet and Peter Fox (gamely played by Uma Thurman and Tim Roth) trade London for Los Angeles where they hope they can steal, smuggle, and cheat their way out of debt and death.

Unfortunately, as soon as our leads land stateside The Con loses its way, giving Roth and Thurman plus Stephen Fry, Alice Eve, Crispin Glover, Sofia Vergara, and company very little to do but try and sprinkle some stardust on an overall disaster and hope their combined charisma alone can carry it to the finish line.

Further complicating matters is the film's complete lack of focus. Unsure whether it wants to be a caper comedy, a con movie, or a Hollywood satire, the incoherent script by James Haslam and Alex Michaelides manages to be a dozen different things before it even reaches its halfway point but none of it's successful.

And when your main stars think they're in a heist movie, castmates Glover, Eve, Vergara, and Parker Posey play up the Hollywood angle, and Maggie Q shows up as a slightly funnier version of her famous small screen role as Nikita, things get increasingly nonsensical fast.

Instead of trying to build a few great double and triple crosses to try and sell it as a convoluted caper comedy, the film goes for cheap laughs and nearly creates a new drinking game out of how many times a majority of its female performers (and one male) suddenly demands that Glover or Roth f***s them.

In the end, Haslam wastes not only his stellar cast and terrific set pieces but also a jazzy score quite well-suited to the picture's purported caper genre. And although Vergara manages to deliver a solid laugh or two in one of her earliest scenes and the rest of its stars have a couple moments while contentedly playing along, this time it's the viewer who gets conned when they stop and consider just how great the film could've actually been.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

DVD Review: Simon Says (2006)

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Presumably because “Jump Rope,” “Checkers,” and “Hopscotch” just weren't creepy enough-- the newest straight-to-disc ultra-violent horror show that reminds us once again to stay the hell out of the woods opted to turn the innocent childhood game of Simon Says into both the title and catch phrase of Barnholtz and Lionsgate Entertainment’s recent B-movie release.



The freak-fest is fairly similar to another “I see soon-to-be-dead people; they’re everywhere” horror sub-genre work I just finished with Haylie Duff’s turn as a screaming, running damsel in a tank-top movie Backwoods. And essentially, Simon Says is likewise hoping to cash in on the hotness of its young cast or more specifically one in particular via Gossip Girl’s Blake Lively who prominently appears on the film’s box with second billing nonetheless but is only present onscreen for the last few minutes of the movie itself.

In the film’s advertising and press release, Simon Says draws comparisons to everything from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Evil Dead II to Friday the 13th with the subtextual bottom line being that it's a rehashed and recycled work of gore o'rama. Still, having recently reviewed parts 2 and 3 in the Friday the 13th Blu-ray releases from Paramount Home Entertainment which resulted in a more invincible version of Jason Voorhees and the introduction of elaborate booby traps—that inspiration was especially present in my mind when this film began.

And sure enough we’re presented with another group of pretty young things-- complete with the obligatory stoner (driving a Scooby-Doo like Mystery Machine for humorous effect), wicked skank, and other “types” who find themselves dispatched in the most gruesome of ways by the film’s truly sick puppy, Simon (Crispin Glover).

Nobody plays twisted camp better than Crispin Glover—and especially when he goes all twisted on a bunch of people trying to camp... with perhaps the exception of Alan Cumming as he proved in his recent directorial effort Ghost Writer. And in fact, having suffered through some truly weak B-movies lately, my mind began to wander as the gore flew during Simon Says and my writer mode took over as I imagined just how alternately terrifying yet thrilling it would be if someone were to cast Glover and Cumming as brothers in a dark thriller.

But enough about the hypothetical as it's time to follow the tagline to “do as you’re told” and move back to Simon Says wherein honestly, just seeing the mysterious Glover’s name in the press release was all the incentive I needed to take a chance on the film.



For, whether he’s keeping samples of Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu’s hair in Charlie’s Angels, being bullied to “Think, McFly, think” in Back to the Future or repeating Melville’s famous line “I would prefer not to” in Bartleby—I find that even when he’s in something this bad, he’s always good. Or, if that's not the case-- at the very least-- when he isn’t given enough to work with, he’s so over-the-top that he makes the film both memorable and worth your time.

And the only reason that Simon Says is of the most remote of interests to viewers is because of Glover who seems to have adopted a bizarre Southern accent that’s equal parts Tennessee Williams and equal parts just plain overly broad, extreme and crazy (think the clichéd Minnesota accents in Fargo) as he plays local dangerous twins Simon and Stanley.

While Glover’s titular threat of “Simon Says” isn’t used consistently throughout the film nor are you ever quite certain just what the deal is with the brothers (whom legend has it consists of one who has special needs and another who’s just plain evil and manipulative)—the poorly constructed screenplay from director William Dear knows that viewers aren’t exactly watching it to analyze the logic behind the events depicted. So ultimately he makes up for the confusion and absence of crafting protagonists with more than one dimension with an emphasis on gore and an unbelievably wicked sense of humor.

As sure enough, it's startling to see such a decidedly (and gleefully) bizarre side of the writer/director who just helmed Warner Brothers’ Mr. Troop Mom, Disney's Angels in the Outfield, and the family cult-classic Harry and the Hendersons via one character’s encounter with a giant sized joint, Glover stomping on a puppy, and the genre’s fixation on T&A.

However, it only becomes far more twisted when you realize that producer Ernie Lively essentially cast his entire family including three daughters, his son-in-law and Blake’s then boyfriend Kelly Blatz to take part in what could best be described as a Jerry Springer episode worthy “home movie.” And although it must be said that since the primary cast are basically just there to engage in petty disagreements, horny foreplay, and partying, Ernie Lively-- who worked so well with his daughter Blake in the Traveling Pants films-- used good taste in not involving his daughters in the film’s main set-up thereby as mentioned earlier saving Blake until the end when it’s left open for a possible sequel.

Yet soon we discover that the real stars of the film other than an unhinged, going-for-broke Crispin Glover are the gallons of fake blood, the makeup department's extensive handiwork of dismembered limbs as plentiful as the leaves on the trees, and an endless supply of shockingly inventive ways to slay the victims.



Par for the course of the movies in the genre and most notably in the Friday the 13th mode it’s going for-- Extreme Movie, College Road Trip and Fired Up! actress Margo Harshmen turns in a good performance as the likable heroine who must try and use her wits to outsmart Glover’s unrelenting madman who has the woods so ridiculously well rigged with weaponry that you’re fairly certain he could take on both Rambo and Die Hard’s John McClane combined.

Essentially it’s an eighty-seven minute example of torture porn that is sure to appeal to Saw devotees or gore buffs who think that Jason Voorhees’ booby traps were child’s play. And while it's definitely preferable to Backwoods, unfortunately overall there’s nothing remotely memorable about the idiotic screenplay and by-the-numbers characters suffice it to say that pleasant childhood memories of the game of Simon Says have all been ruined along with the affection I had for Dear’s Harry and the Hendersons as a young girl.

Yet, despite this-- the only thing that kept me watching in the genre's disturbingly effective odd can’t look away state of genuine shock (and slight amusement of just how extreme he was in retrospect now that the film has been ejected from my player) was seeing Glover once again master the art of playing a nonsensical nutbar who's more far-out there than any character he's played so far.