Apple TV+ Luck (2022)

[Jake Lipson]

Title: Luck (2022)

Tagline: Sometimes all you need is for everything to go wrong.

Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy

Director: Peggy Holmes

Cast: Eva Noblezada, Simon Pegg, Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Flula Borg, Lil Rel Howery, Colin O'Donoghue, John Ratzenberger, Adelynn Spoon, Grey DeLisle, Suzy Nakamura, Kari Wahlgren, Kwaku Fortune, Chris Edgerly, Moe Irvin, Nick Thurston, Fred Tatasciore

Release: 2022-08-05

Runtime: 105

Plot: Suddenly finding herself in the never-before-seen Land of Luck, the unluckiest person in the world must unite with the magical creatures there to turn her luck around.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I watched Luck on Apple TV+ today. They are releasing it as an original film for the streaming service and it is not receiving a theatrical release.

It is the first feature film from Skydance Animation. Peggy Holmes is the director. She previously made The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning and a couple of the Tinker Bell movies. But most of the press is focused on John Lasseter because he was hired to run Skydance Animation after being let go from Disney following his scandal. He has really brought over a lot of the storytelling devices that are often found in Pixar films.

I decided to watch this because Eva Noblezada voices the lead character, Sam. I am a big fan of her work from other projects. I think she is wonderful and I will watch almost much anything that she is in.

But unfortunately, the movie around her is not as wonderful I think she is. It feels like the movie really wants to create a compelling alternate world like Monsters, Inc. or Inside Out, but the writing just isn't as sharp as those movies. Most of the plot involves the characters having to go here to get a thing in order to be able to use it to do a thing, and then when that doesn't work the way they want, they have to go get another thing to do another thing, rinse and repeat. The movie is a lot more focused on plot mechanics than on character development, and the worldbuilding is never as interesting as it should be. The movie is really predictable and it doesn't really ever feel like the characters are ever in any genuine danger. So the stakes feel low even though the movie says they are high. Also, it has a lot of poop jokes -- more than its fair share.

There's really nothing here that we haven't seen done better in other movies of this type. If this is a representative sample of the type of film that Skydance Animation wants to put out, it isn't really very distinctive.

 

[Ross Gowland]

I thought it was terrific. A few minor quibbles but overall I really enjoyed it.