Common Sense Media Review
Uneven Lindsay Lohan comedy; older tweens and up.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 13+?
Any Positive Content?
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Just My Luck
What's the Story?
PR assistant Ashley (Lindsay Lohan) is very lucky. She gets a date with a wealthy, vacant pretty boy, David (Chris Carmack) and lands a super-important account within minutes. Assigned to organize a party for Damon Phillips' (Faizon Love) hot new record label, seems in her element until. Enter Jake (Chris Pine), who has nothing but bad luck. Jake 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, 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.
Is It Any Good?
Trying too hard to be perky, JUST MY LUCK becomes increasingly bogged down in clichés. 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 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.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about 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)?
Movie Details
- In theaters : May 12, 2006
- On DVD or streaming : August 22, 2006
- Cast : Chris Pine , Lindsay Lohan , Samaire Armstrong
- Director : Donald Petrie
- Inclusion Information : Female Movie Actor(s)
- Studio : Twentieth Century Fox
- Genre : Comedy
- Run time : 103 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- MPAA explanation : some brief sexual references
- Last updated : September 21, 2019
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