Skydance's Luck

[EricJ]

I could buy into the concept, but, like Ben said, if it hadn't been Lasseter, we'd have been crying "Lame Monsters Inc. knockoff" like Storks.
With Lasseter, it looked like it had enough humor, until Plot Girl stumbled in, and...then it felt like we could write the entire movie from there. Which a good Pixar teaser NEVER had you predicting.

[Farerb]

Just realized that I forgot to post the trailer:

[Randall]

IndieWire score: D+. The snarky review has some choice comments to make. I like the line about the protagonist at least not having to deal with talking cars.

[Dacey]

It seems like everyone is reviewing this as a JL film...even though it isn't a JL film...although it sounds like he did plenty of meddling to try to make it a JL film...and Apple is selling it as a JL film without mentioning him by name. Oy. I think I'm giving myself a headache.

Of course, JL's involvement may also give some critics reluctance to give this a fair shake (or maybe not, considering Coco still won the Oscar for BFA just as that stuff was all over the headlines).

[Randall]

Here's that link:
https://www.indiewire.com/2022/08/luck- ... 234747519/

It does seem that JL is the big story everyone's pushing. And that's (just one reason) why maybe Skydance should have thought twice about bringing him on. There's a sense of gloating about how much he's "cursed" Luck.

More, from RT:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/luck_2022
Interestingly, the audience scores it much better than the critics, if that means anything.

[Farerb]

I haven't seen it yet and I think I'm not even going to bother, but some of the reviews I read pointed out these things as a negative:
- Quirky and clumsy heroine.
- No Villain.

I Looked at those critics and saw that they usually give Disney and Pixar films positive reviews, and this is what's bizarre to me cause those things are issues in Disney and Pixar films as well, so either critics are too hard on this film because of Lasseter, or ctitics are just not honest and genuine when they review Disney films. It's probably both.

[Randall]

Perhaps, but I also see lots of mention of a convoluted story, rehashed characters, uninspired design (evident in the trailers, I thought), and an unengaging premise.

[Ben]

I did notice Disney was "brave" enough to include JL in the "thanks to" credits of Lightyear. And while Luck wasn’t instigated by JL, it clearly *is* his "comeback movie", as Apple itself is promoting that aspect to the promotional press. Okay, he didn’t fire the director and install himself onto the project, but he did remove the original director and swapped them for someone with a much weaker voice than many he has worked with, and I’m sure the resulting film is not just all down to Peggy Holmes, one-time choreographer and director of such story-driven films as the DTVs Little Mermaid 3 and a Tinkerbell sequel…

[Dacey]

JL was heavily involved in the Tinker Bell franchise, at least with regards to the first one. Presumably he liked working with Holmes (who did helm the best of the batch), which could be another reason this got the gig here.

Also, given everything, it certainly doesn’t look bad for JL to give Skydance’s first film a female director.

[EricJ]

JL was heavily involved in the Tinker Bell franchise, at least with regards to the first one. Presumably he liked working with Holmes (who did helm the best of the batch), which could be another reason this got the gig here.

Holmes was on a Tinkerbell movie (I blindly guessed the Periwinkle one, and checked IMDb to see I was correct), but Lasseter was involved on the first one, namely when DisneyToon studios was keeping two sets of books to keep Lasseter from finding out about a Peter-Pan-sequel storyline that JL was about to make verboten.

More to the point, Holmes also directed on "The Pirate Fairy", the one that had its storyline drastically rebooted mid-production, which probably appealed to JL's importance on a director that could keep tight reins on the story.