Let’s not pretend that Just My Luck is anything but what it is – yet another entry in that oft-deplored genre of the brainless, soulless teen rom-com, churned out in a by-the-numbers fashion to take advantage of the flash-in-a-pan fame of the hottest tween heartthrob/it girl of the moment. In JML, the protagonists are played by Lindsay Lohan, winsome red-headed tabloid darling of the alleged yo-yo dieting and wild partying, and the shambly-cute Chris Pine, who’s making rather a go of it at turning up in tweenage flicks (his previous screen credits include a role in The Princess Diaries 2). The twosome strike up a cute enough chemistry as Ashley Albright and Jake Hardin respectively, a girl blessed all her life with incredible good luck and a guy who’s spent most of his dealing with just about every calamity and minor crisis Fate can throw his way. Life is divided into the haves and have-nots, JML cheerfully informs us, and proceeds in that determinedly chirpy rom-com way to try to prove that love – when it finally hits you – is the best form of luck you can have.
Hmmm, cheesy as a camembert factory doubling as a brie warehouse. But honestly, that is pretty much all the plot there is. Impossibly lucky girl with dream job and dream apartment meets hapless, luckless fool at a masked ball – they kiss, and suddenly their fortunes make a very drastic switch. Suddenly, Ashley crashes and burns in every way possible, getting turfed out of job, home and life, while Jake rises just as quickly from the bowling-alley slum that was his life to become a hotshot radio producer sitting on a gold mine in the form of McFly (a real-life pop-rock band whose members gamely play themselves in this movie). As Ashley struggles to adjust to her newfound state of destitution, she tries to find the mysterious guy she kissed at the party so she can plant another one on him and get her good luck back. What she doesn’t realise is that the incredibly friendly Jake, with whom she struck up a glancing friendship when he demonstrates a totally cool empathy for all the crap she’s going through, is that guy… and kissing him again will send him back to the oblivion that used to be his dreary everyday existence.
Subtle this is not, and it’s so shamelessly mainstream that it doesn’t even try to rise above its genre roots. Every cliché you can think of is checked off – token quirky best friends for the girl, charming pet/child to prove that the guy is a sweetheart however much of a loser he may be… and did I forget the stunt casting? The movie is so hopelessly derivative that every plot twist can be seen coming from a mile away. (Although, as with most rom-coms, the supporting characters – such as Missi Pyle’s remarkably variable boss – provide the most amusement in terms of emotional volatility. Pyle’s final scene is a hoot.)
The movie never really recognises the subtlety of its main concept, and instead of really exploring the nature of luck, fortune and love, chooses to overplay it for comedic value. It’s hard to believe the string of truly awful things that happen to both Jake and Ashley (usually within the space of an hour or something ridiculous like that) whenever Fortune doesn’t shine on them, but it’s clear that it’s all meant for a laugh – Jake’s attempt to pick up the money he keeps finding is a weak running joke that takes us through to a sequence that involves him running through a park with his pants pooled around his ankles. After a while, however easily you suspend disbelief (and I do so pretty damn well), the movie becomes so contrived it’s hard to stifle a little annoyance that it didn’t try harder to be less obvious with its plot trajectory.
However, because JML honestly doesn’t try to be anything more than it is – a rom-com meant to cash in on L. Lo’s fame – it doesn’t over-reach, and for all its faults, remains a fairly amiable, harmless little diversion. The chemistry between the two leads isn’t anything special and is never going to be remembered as one of the great screen pairings. But Lohan and Pine are cute enough together, and cute enough on their own, to pass the time. Pine in particular, with his messy hair and winning puppy-dog grin, makes for a great lovable loser – it’s sweet when his Jake variously tends to Ashley’s injuries and saves her from freak electrical thunderstorms, proffering his emergency backpack, not to mention his heart, along the way. Lohan suffers a little by comparison, unfortunately, looking a bit wan and underfed, while demonstrating only a smidgen of the spunk and charm she exuded in Mean Girls and Freaky Friday. Meanwhile, the movie is amusing enough to keep you from slipping into the dire side of boredom. Ashley’s rapid downward spiral, prompting her to become increasingly superstitious, is pretty cute. It is true that, aside from one of the movie’s earliest scenes in which Jake’s pants spend more time being hiked up than actually being worn, there’s nothing in the way of big laughs – but the movie does raise quite a few chuckles as it trundles along.
If this is the kind of thing you’re usually okay with watching, JML won’t scar you too horribly. And for a movie that was clearly churned out for no reason other than to make piles of cash from a pre-pubescent generation eager to become Lindsay Lohan, that counts as pretty high praise… I suppose.
shawneofthedead 