Lucky Movie Review: If I Had a Million Dollars...

Runtime: 103 minutes
Release Date: July 15, 2011
Rating: R
Director: Gil Cates Jr.


Lucky opens with a pretty blonde woman buying a lottery ticket at a convenience store. After the clerk attempts to flirt with her badly, she grabs her ticket and leaves. Noticing that she left behind her license, the clerk runs after her and finds her gone.


We then get to meet Lucy and Ben. Old friends, the two now work at the same office but rarely talk. Ben is your typically nebbish guy who lives with his mom and doesn't really have any friends. Lucy is a super happy and peppy woman who is in love with her coworker Steve. Steve ends their affair at lunch, which leads to Lucy telling his clients during an important meeting that they were lovers and basically quitting her job.


Ben's mom calls and asks him to come home because of an emergency. When he rushes home, he finds the local news waiting to congratulate him for winning $36 million in the lottery. Ben heads downstairs, watches the news, and hears about a new missing girl. He then goes to his closet and sees the dead body of the girl from the store and lets her know that her ticket was a winner.


When Lucy finds out about his win, she decides to finally give him a chance. This leads to her frequently turning up wherever he is and kind of throwing herself at him. They start dating and eventually marry. Lucy seems to bring out the bad side of Ben, convincing him that as a millionaire, he can now do whatever he wants. On their honeymoon in Hawaii, Ben kills a hotel maid after imaging that she's Lucy. She oversees the murder and thinks about calling the police before finally deciding to stick with him. When they get back home, Lucy realizes that this wasn't a first time thing and that her new husband is a serial killer with an interest in women who look just like her.


I heard a lot about Lucky before I sat down to watch it, but as much as I like both Colin Hanks and Ari Graynor, this film didn't do either of them justice. Lucy is such an annoying character that you can't possibly root for her. She goes from loving a random man at work to deciding that she needs to win Ben, even though she never cared for him before. All she cares about now is his money, which she makes clear when he runs out on their honeymoon.


Everything that she does in the film is because she just wants his money. There was one point in the film where I thought she might actually care about him. After finding three bodies buried on their property, she digs them up and moves them. Turns out that she's just worried that if someone finds them, she might lose out on her gravy train.


I loved Hanks in Band of Brothers, Orange County and on Roswell, but there is nothing to love about him here. Not only is his character incredibly boring, but he isn't even a very good serial killer. The movie tries to make his scenes funny or light but it fails completely. After murdering the maid, he sets up the room to make it look like she slipped on a banana peel and hit her head. Instead of making me laugh, it made me groan.


Lucky was in my Netflix queue forever, but now I think I understand why I waited so long to watch it.