by Alice-Ginevra Micheli, Contributing Writer
When Luck began, I thought I’d accidentally-d myself onto Disney+, which was the wrong streamer ending with an addition sign. Everything about what was happening on screen looked familiar: the look, the feel, the story beats, and even the slight tinge of magic in the air.
You can imagine my surprise when I looked it up, and I was in fact watching the right movie. Not the latest Pixar phenomenon, but the newest Skydance production about a young woman who’s a little down on her luck. However, as soon as I looked a little further and saw the name behind the ‘creative’, I realied what had happened.
Since leaving Disney and Pixar in quiet disgrace, John Lasseter has made his claim on the little studio that could at Skydance, and this was his first foray back into the world. Along with burgeoning director Peggy Holmes and a surprisingly impressive voice cast, this film should have at least been able to wow me in a manner beyond its copycat ways.
I was all primed, too! The story sounded absolutely fascinating. Luck follows our heroine, Sam (voiced by Eva Noblezada), who ventures out into the world on her own for the first time with a positive attitude, and an apparent magnet for bad luck. However, she soon finds herself in the middle of a millennia-old battle between the organizations of good luck and bad luck that secretly affects everyday lives.
Wacky, right? This concept has everything going for it, and honestly it held the film up by a lot throughout the runtime. I kept thinking that while I could see that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they just needed to dig a little deeper to get there. Yet, they never did.
This is as surface level as a movie can get. Every time something of note, of depth, of feeling was beginning to be explored, I was quickly moved on to the next adventure, and everything was tied up with a neat green bow. Another way to describe it is as paint-by-numbers as you can get — so mediocre in what it achieves, that I was just waiting for the resolution to come just so that I could see something, ANYTHING, happen.
Even the animation, the one thing it really had going for it at the beginning, wasn’t quite right. The emotions weren’t translated as well, the actions were a little too smooth, and it all just looked a little off. I will say, however, that the work put onto the hair texture was definitely there, so there’s a pro for you at least.
I teased the cast for you before, so let me rattle off some names here: Simon Pegg, Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Fonda, and John Ratzenberger — that’s right, Ham himself. That alone would have been enough to interest me in the first place; however, unfortunately, no one here was doing their best, or even really good, work. It was all so bland, as was the performance of our main, Noblezada, who sounded like she was just imitating Mandy Moore’s Rapunzel in Tangled,rather than trying to put a spin on her own character.
In short, there really isn’t much to say here. For all the advertising that was touted to us regarding how this would be the creative genius Lasseter’s return to the big screen (or I guess in this case, mid-size screen), it certainly fizzled. Yes, it hit all the right beats, and took us through the three different acts as any story should have, but although the exploration of the lore of luck might be something that hasn’t been done yet, it certainly is still a gold mine due to the extremely little they decided to do with it here.
There are basic storylines that aren’t ever really followed through, and questions raised, but never answered, which left me with a bad, unsatisfied taste in my mouth.
No, it’s not the worst animated movie I’ve ever seen; far from it. However, I feel that my disappointment further lays in the fact that there are such blatant similarities (read: rip-offs) in the style to Disney, that the whole time I just wished I could be watching one of their movies instead.
Luck had a lot of potential to really be another fantastic Apple TV+ animation, along the lines of Wolfwalkers, and instead ended up residing somewhere around the Vivo rank. It’s fine, it’s passable, it’s simply surface level.
If you’re a family looking for a couple hours of quiet enjoyment, then this won’t cause any undue harm, and will adequately entertain. However, if you’re looking for literally anything more, then skip this, head on over to that other streamer and pick something from their catalogue instead.
Score: 5/10
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