Starring Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Eva Noblezada, Simon Pegg, Flula Borg, Lil Rey Howery, Colin O’Donoghue, John Ratzenberger, Adelynn Spoon

Directed by Peggy Holmes

Apple TV+, August 5, 2022

Sam Greenfield is the unluckiest person in the world…

This is a film that has many strange elements. We have leprechauns, black cats, walking roots who look like turnips and goblins, to say nothing of the German unicorns and statuesque dragons.

On top of that we have ill-advised accents in every quarter and lip syncing that doesn’t quite work.

Which is a way of saying that I don’t quite know what to make of this film.

It is bright, and cute but I don’t think it knows what it wants to be.

I confess the opening few minutes were tough to watch – because who can watch people be pushed down again and again by bad fortune and not be moved? It was a solid start and I expected great things. It didn’t deliver.

The film’s premise is simple – good and bad luck are real things and are sent to this world from the world of Luck. The world of Luck assigns luck randomly. So you might actually be unlucky for real but the reason is… luck.

If that sounds strange, it’s because it is. The film refuses to engage with any of the consequences of what bad luck actually means for those who suffer it and refuses to acknowledge how good luck can entrench privilege for those who are on the receiving end.

It also refuses to engage with the fact that often bad luck can have differing impacts on those with and without resources. In other words, the rich can absorb bad luck while the poor cannot.

For this film to work everyone has to be equal to start with, to have access to the same opportunities and options and resources. What’s interesting is the film implicitly acknowledges this isn’t the case (the main character is an orphan), but it isn’t willing to face these problems head on. Our heroine is plucky and as a result never gives up no matter how bad things get and no matter how crushed her dreams. In one sense that’s a great thing but in another it really isn’t facing the challenge of bad luck or the way having resources provides opportunities to create good luck.

Which means that the central premise of the film is hobbled by the truth that it only really wants to focus on the nice parts of its story. It infantilises its audience and I don’t mean it’s a film for children because this is not a morality tale I’d want my kids to learn from.

This also means there’s no antagonist because the story refuses to present one – even those who have on-screen reasons to want to change the status quo or push back against the heroine dial back their ambitions simply because. There is no discussion of why good luck and bad luck as concepts might be worth exploring, about why a world without ‘bad’ luck might be worth aiming for.

Alternatively, why not reduce the amount of bad luck if you don’t want to eliminate it entirely or, perhaps, cap the amount any one person can receive.

The narrative choices here are baffling – and that’s before we consider the really very odd decision to use leprechauns with appalling Irish accents as the main background characters. Every time we head towards some kind of expression of the real consequences of bad luck the story veers away. The bar owner who has to make twice the number of drinks because the first one is likely to end up on the floor wouldn’t last long in the real world and would be at a huge disadvantage to the bar owner who always got his drinks right.

Or consider just how many accidents there are in the part of Luck which creates bad luck. No one seemed to actually get hurt, no one commented on it, and no one was concerned that they were always suffering.

In the end bad luck apparently makes no difference at all. Which leaves you asking what is the point of it?

I don’t know about you but if I discovered my neighbours were making luck and benefiting from it but were happy to see me suffer every single day… that might well be enough for me to go to war with them.

This is a film with an extraordinary premise which had its heart scooped out in its decision not to take that premise seriously.

The voice acting is fine and the animation is largely great. Character designs are OK and now it feels like I’m damning with faint praise. My problem is this: you compare this to the best animated films out there right now, heck, even the best family films, and it’s hard to see how this rises above any of them. It’s a real shame

Verdict: The problem this film has isn’t that it’s unlucky, it’s that it failed to take itself seriously. Kids and adults alike are going to find that disappointing.

Rating? 5 flips of the coin out of 10.

Stewart Hotston