Lucky You

"Even though it is sometimes dull and generally thin, there is something winning about the movie's genial lack of ambition..."

"The movie soon disappears into a maelstrom of card games. The outcomes of most are predictable, but more damaging is how little emotional stake the audience has in any. Huck is such a shallow, self-pitying cad you cannot understand what Billie sees in him. The father-son dynamics are tired and banal. All peripheral characters are one-note oddities..."

"The result is that most of the picture plays out as a series of scenes in which our hero sits there, gets angry and loses all his money..."

"Always good with actors, Hanson brings out a beaten-down charm in Bana that works nicely against the hotheaded authority the actor shows in the gambling scenes, while Duvall is, like the veteran card shark he plays, a master of subtle gestures. The low card here is Barrymore, somewhat awkwardly shoehorned into this boys' club to provide some romantic relief..."

"Had Lucky You played strictly as a father-son drama set against the background of competitive Texas Hold 'Em, it would've been a much better movie based on the strength of Hanson's direction and Duvall's performance alone. But no, somewhere along the line they had to make this a romance, and that's the movie's fatal flaw..."