Vegas Movies: Lucky You

Lucky You could have been one of the great Las Vegas movies, but for reasons that remain unclear, it's craps out.

Director Curtis Hanson is one of those rare filmmakers who really makes the city his films are set in a main character. In his best work, like 8 Mile, Wonder Boys, and the neo-noir masterpiece LA Confidential, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and 1950s Los Angeles come to vivid life. A Curtis Hanson film set in Las Vegas had endless potential, but Lucky You, the story of an irresponsible gambler who makes his living at the poker table dealing with daddy issues, fizzled both critically and commercially.

Since this is a Vegas-themed blog (and not a source for incisive film criticism), I won't bore you with a long review. The movie was a box office disaster, mostly because the studio released it with little to no fanfare. They must have known they had a stinker on their hands, as the chemistry between Eric Bana (who is for some reason always cast as a humorless brooder even though he was a comedian in Australia and he practically explodes off the screen with manic and angry charisma in Chopper, the movie that  brought him to Hollywood's attention) and naive cocktail waitress Drew Barrymore is non-existent, the story has been told 10,000 times before, and screen legend Robert Duval (playing Bana's gruff poker-legend father) seems to be completely checked out. More than anything, the movie just feels completely lifeless, as Hanson fails to capture the crazy kinetic flashy energy of modern day Sin City.

That failure, to me, is the greatest disappointment of the film. It would be hard for me to get excited about a poker movie under most circumstances, but Curtis Hanson telling the story of an up and down on his luck Vegas-based poker player sounded rich with potential. While Hanson is semi-successful at depicting life away from The Strip for Bana, who lives in a small unfurnished home he rarely visits, he does very little to make Las Vegas come alive in ways comparable to how he treated other great cities he's depicted in his films. Hanson clearly wanted to capture Vegas in an lived-in and accurate manner, shooting on location for every scene (save for the scenes in The Bellagio Poker Room, which are shot in a meticulously detailed recreation on a sound-stage designed to reflect what it look like before its mid-Aughts redesign, because for some reason the movie is a period piece that takes place in the ancient times of 2003, even though the film was released in 2007 after spending a year on the shelf).


In one memorable scene, Bana tries to borrow money from Robert Downey Jr. (bringing a welcome jolt of energy in a pre-Iron Man cameo that reminds you that he used to be an interesting character actor not so long ago) as a smooth-talking 1-900 number operator working multiple phone lines and conning callers out of their money by the minute as he plays the part of lawyer, board-certified psychologist, and contract-specialist, all from an empty casino bar. The brief scene is a glimpse at the unique Vegas movie that might have been, as is the sequence when Bana's Huck (I know, I know, that name, but in co-screenwriters Hanson and Eric Roth's defense, they named him after a real famous poker player) starts with a tiny bit of cash and spends the evening slowly "chipping up" until he's got thousands of dollars in winnings from unsuspecting gamblers in his pocket before losing it all in a risky bet (which illustrates his character flaw of playing poker too recklessly and living his life with his cards too close to his chest, or something out of screenwriting 101) is another glimmer of what could have been.

But too much of the movie feels one step removed from the heartbeat of the city, as Bana romances Barrymore on top of a parking lot or in empty casinos during times that they would be bustling with activity, even during the post recession downturn of the city. I don't know if it's a function of the fact that shooting in a city that's open and crowded 24/7 is nearly impossible, but Hanson's Vegas is devoid of people, color and energy, which is just wrong for a city that glows and flashes in blinding neon (with one light so bright it can be seen from friggin' space). Hanson also fails to explore some of the stranger and lesser known corners of Vegas, while the main characters are charmless, boring, and completely standard, as the Oscar nominated director misses a great opportunity to capture one of the most photographed cities in the world in new and exciting ways or to reveal the intricate quirks of the people who actually live there.


Perhaps it's a function of Hanson exploring a sadder, seedier, and less flashy side of the town than the vision that those "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" ads attempt to depict, but there's a dismal lack of energy to Lucky You that drains the city of life and color. It's a strange letdown for a filmmaker who captured the shimmering and seductive glow of 1950's Hollywood so perfectly in LA Confidential. Curtis Hanson is one of the most undervalued filmmakers working in Hollywood, and setting is usually as important to his films as anything else. The authentic sense of place he's captured in most of his films is comparable to the work of a master of the metropolitan such as Woody Allen, but for some curious reason, Curtis Hanson just wasn't able to capture the unique and bizarre buzz of Sin City.

Vegas Movies: The Hangover

The Hangover 2 has bowled over all kinds of box office records, grossing about $100 million over the long holiday weekend that it opened and passing the first Hangover film, previously the most successful R-rated comedy of all time, within just a few weeks of release. But box office success does not necessarily mean the movie is actually, you know, good. The Hangover 2 is one of the laziest sequels ever conceived by Hollywood; it's like the filmmakers made Xeorox copies of the screenplay from the surprise hit from two summers back and took black markers to it, replacing Las Vegas locations with seedier ones in Bangkok. That seems to be the extent of the "writing" that went into this film.

BUT! That's not the point of this article. This post will be the first in a series of "regular" (read "semi-regular" or, more accurately, "when I feel like writing them") posts about Vegas movies. And I could start this series by blogging about a Vegas classic like the original "Oceans Eleven" or Scorsese's "Casino" (or even "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous") but because "The Hangover" and stars Zach Galiafianakis (currently memeing hard for a few recent interviews that sparked a "is he an interesting and sensitive artist comedian who is uncomfortable with fame or is he just an asshole debate," one which I find stupid; can't a guy make fun of the bullshitty Hollywood machine without being branded a dick?), Ed Helms, and Bradley Cooper are all popular search terms this summer, I'm going to start the series by talking about the original "Hangover."

Wrong-headed or not, this is a movie that does a pretty good job of exploring the Vegas I'm familiar with and while I've never had a crazy adventure involving Mike Tyson's tiger, a stolen police car, and a naked Asian gangster, I have had my long Vegas dark nights of the soul followed by regret-filled mornings. There's times I've woken up in Las Vegas and wished I could forget the adventures of the previous evening, like the Rufied heroes of The Hangover, who spend most of the picture's running time trying to fill in the gaps of what the eff happened the night before as they search for their friend who is supposed to be married back in Los Angeles before the metaphorical ticking clock built into the screenplay goes off. The fact that the groom-to-be is played by the likable enough yet totally bland Justin Bartha (who is barely in the movie and never really seems like he's friends with the rest of the characters beyond the characters saying out loud what good friends they are), and the fact that his fiancee is beautiful but fleshed out at all as a character (and seems a little bitchy and vain, a symptom of the movie's inability to depict woman as anything other than bitches or naive strippers) make the machinations of said ticking clock a little less suspenseful and urgent, than, say, the work of Alfred Hitchcock.

So anyway... I'm not gonna write a review of a two year old movie that almost everyone on the planet has seen at this point. I'm gonna talk about it in terms of how it stacks up as a Las Vegas movie.

The Hangover sets its heroes loose on an adventure where many Vegas landmarks, ranging from swanky to seedy, are visited/ violated. Though the massive suite the characters check into at Caesars Palace is breathtakingly cool and features a view of The Strip that made me want to get rich enough to stay in such a place as soon as possible, the suite is also the setting where the images that most define the film (and The Hangover franchise as a whole) take place; in the morning after their first night in town, the boys find the suite torn to shreds, with cigars still smoldering in burned out couches, an inhuman number of beer cans strewn about, a chicken wandering around aimlessly, characters with missing teeth and pants, the unexplainable presence of an infant in a closet, and famously, a live tiger in the bathroom. This bombed out suite is what The Hangover is all about, as if the movie were a 2 hour version of the infamous What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas ad campaign launched nearly a decade ago by the city's tourism council (which is a pretty ballsy message for a tourism council, when one really thinks about it).

The boys' wake up in the apocalyptic suite, unable to remember what happened the night before or to locate their friend and the groom-to-be whose impending nuptials they're celebrating. The group's (mis)adventures take them to iconic Vegas locales like the Bellagio, Mike Tyson's house, a quickie wedding chapel (the fictional "Best Little Wedding Chapel," but clearly similar to places like The Strip's famous A Little White Chapel and Chapel of the Bells) where Ed Helms' dentist marries a stripper on a whim, while the movie's famously filthy photo montage features cameos from Vegas icon Wayne Newton yes-he's-still-alive-and-performing Carrot Top.

So how does The Hangover rate in terms of Las Vegas movies? The raunch-fest certainly shows off the "boys behaving badly" side of Vegas that's become the town's popular image (an image the town has been happy to cultivate). And while the gags in The Hangover are raunchy and R-rated, there is nothing particularly shocking or very inventive about the "wolf-pack's" hijimks in the end. The boys end up finding their missing friend and getting him back to LA in time for his wedding, while Bradley Cooper's cadish (or doucheish, depending on how you see him) everyman resumes his normal, married-with-children life after a weekend of "crazy" debauchery; this, is, after all, the very fantasy Vegas is selling in the end, isn't it? Guys can take a weekend off from their responsibilities, get "crunk" in ways that will become legendary to themselves and their friends (and probably boring to anyone else who has to hear their stories) before they return to their normal, passive, consumerist existence. In this fashion, The Hangover is actually kind of an honest depiction of a Las Vegas lost weekend and helps to explain the movie's universal appeal (despite the fact that it gets less funny as it goes on); we can all relate to the idea of weekend in Vegas with our own personal wolfpacks that allowed us to go feral (in our minds at least; in fact this kind of Vegas bad behavior is really an example of participating in controlled, safe and heavily advertised legal consumerism) for a few days before returning to our more boring lives. Though most of us, admittedly, will never discover Mike Tyson's tiger in our hotel suite after a weekend running with the wolves.