Common Sense Note
Parents should know that the movie includes a number of poop jokes. Lots of silly slapstick: The heroine falls into art (a pile of mud), falls off a ladder, and the hero is hit by a cab. Several characters are ruthlessly selfish and snobbish, and they lie and cheat one another. Women wear close-fitting, sometimes ridiculous outfits. A gypsy fortune teller is troublingly stereotypical. Characters drink, sometimes to drunkenness.
Families can discuss the concept of luck: Is it a function of chance or fate? How does it affect hope and ambition? How does the gypsy fortune teller both legitimize and make ridiculous the premise of luck (or fate, as these might be related)?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Trying too hard to be perky, JUST MY LUCK becomes increasingly bogged down in clichés. An assistant at a Manhattan PR firm, Ashley (the irrepressible Lindsay Lohan) is very lucky. For her, the sun always shines, cabs stop on cue, and the club party gods smile on her. As the movie starts, she gets a date with a wealthy, vacant pretty boy, David (Chris Carmack) and lands a super-important account within minutes, even as her narcissistic boss, Peggy (Missi Pyle), is trapped in an elevator, making faces and belittling her employees.
Assigned to organize a party for Damon Phillips' (Faizon Love) hot new record label, Ashley seems in her element until... she kisses Jake (Chris Pine), a Clark-Kent-looking fellow (complete with glasses he keeps pushing up on his nose) who has nothing but bad luck (his parallel opening has him picking up dog poop, getting kicked in the crotch, splatting and stumbling and -- most important -- missing his chance to pitch a cd to Damon). He sneaks into the dance party (wearing a mask), kisses Ashley, and steals her luck. From then on, while Jake gets his contract, a new apartment, new clothes and contact lenses, Ashley is beset by bad luck: Her high heel breaks, her apartment floods, she's arrested for pimping (she didn't know the date she arranged involved a male prostitute), and she blithely pops in a contact lens after retrieving it from a kitty litter box (ewww), leading directly to an infected eye and an eye patch.
After a gypsy fortune teller (Tovah Feldshuh) explains the switch, Ashley and her best friends, Maggie (Samaire Armstrong) and Dana (Bree Turner), look for the masked man, in hopes of stealing her luck back. Wouldn't you know, Ashley loses her job and apartment and ends up working at the bowling alley where Jake used to work: for no good reason, they fall in love, and then she must decide whether to take back her luck or let him go on having a great life. That these seem the only options makes the movie seem unimaginative, as do the "comic" set pieces: Ashley falling off a ladder, Ashley cleaning bathrooms, Ashley gagging on someone's used gum, Ashley battling an over-sudsing washing machine, etc.
Ashley eventually makes a right choice and at last the movie can end. The greatest mystery of Just My Luck is that it so badly uses Lohan, who can be terrifically charismatic and, as she was with Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday, prone to smart comic timing. This movie evinces little of that, only puts her in one silly situation after another.
Families who like this movie might also like other Lindsay Lohan movies, like Freaky Friday or The Parent Trap (where she is much younger and frankly, adorable); or you might want to see other change-in-fortune movies, like Big or The Lizzie McGuire Movie.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentKisses between primary couple; one character is revealed to be a professional escort (and Ashley is arrested for pimping); some soundtrack music includes sexual allusions (including "Goodies," by Ciara). |
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ViolenceAssorted pratfalls and spills by "unlucky" characters; when Jake falls on her and his pants accidentally fall down, a woman kicks Jake in his crotch. |
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LanguageA couple of uses of "s--t out of luck" (abbreviated to "SOL"); "s--t," "kick-ass song," "damn it," "bullocks," plus obnoxious language ("sucking up," "crap, "that sucks"); joke horoscope ("Your mood is in Uranus"). |
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Social BehaviorFrequent gross-out humor, especially poop jokes. Characters lie and cheat. |
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CommercialismEntire film advertises real-life band McFly (here playing themselves); characters drop brand names, like Dolce (& Gabbana), Bergdorf's. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoDrinks at party, reference to vodka, visible bar in upscale apartment provided to lucky boy. |
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