Directed by: Peggy Holmes
Starring: Eva Noblezada, Simon Pegg, Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg
Rated G, 105 minutes
If the past year of workplace news, from the “Great Resignation” to unionization efforts at Amazon and Starbucks, has made many Americans reconsider how we think about labor, then “Luck” sees the same awareness coming to an unlikely place: kids’ movies. Set largely at a fantastical factory where good and bad luck are produced and pumped out into the real world, “Luck” calls to mind “Monsters, Inc.” in its use of a corporate setting to explain the mysteries of life. But where “Monsters, Inc.” used its premise as a jumping-off point for a story full of memorable characters and surprises, “Luck” is as workaday as punching the clock.
Here we meet 18-year-old Sam (voiced by Eva Noblezada, “Yellow Rose”), living on her own for the first time and suffering from a lifelong streak of bad luck. Mostly her misfortune is slapstick—she knocks over cans of glitter, she gets stuck in her bathroom, her Murphy bed snaps shut while she’s lying on it—but sometimes it’s more upsetting. As she sits alone in her new home reflecting on a childhood spent moving among short-term foster homes, her bad luck begins to feel like a deeper curse. But then she comes across a talking black cat and a lucky golden coin, and she follows the cat through a strange portal. She finds herself transported into the Land of Luck, where the cat, Bob (Simon Pegg, “Shaun of the Dead”), begrudgingly agrees to help her sneak some luck back into the real world.
Their plan goes awry, but the movie around them is even worse off. “Luck,” like so many animated films of the last twenty years, carbon copies Pixar’s signature 3D style, every character rendered with the same smooth skin and big eyes and neatly combed hair. The only deviation, really, is in their lips, which never quite match up with the dialogue, making the film persistently irritating to watch. Slapstick sequences offer more visual flair; in the movie’s best bad-luck gag, Sam accidentally flings her toast into the wall, where it slowly flops to the floor, leaving imprints of jam in its wake. But outside of a few brief sequences of sharply animated details, the film comes up wanting. In a song-and-dance number, Sam performs the same dance move over and over, as if the animators meant to come back to add more and simply forgot.
The Land of Luck itself is designed with an ambitiously futuristic look, but after enough time it, too, raises questions. Where, for example, does everyone live? All we ever see are security checkpoints and work zones. And who keeps the place so clean? Why is there a CEO, and why is she a dragon named Babe? Next to all the arbitrary story beats and flat dialogue, the spotty world-building of the Land of Luck accumulates and mars the plot like clogged pipes.
What world-building we do get is uncertain at best. The Land of Luck is divided into upstairs and downstairs, with leprechauns and rabbits producing good luck from the clean, utopian upper level, while roots and goblins make bad luck from the dark, dirty underside of the complex. After spending the first two acts upstairs, Sam finally goes downstairs, where she discovers that the monsters who make bad luck, themselves subject to its pollution, are actually friendly. But don’t be fooled into thinking there might be a shakeup in the offing thanks to Sam’s arrival. When all is said and done, “Luck” is an unabashed and uncritical celebration of the status quo, where living in harmony means everyone accepting their station with a smile.
Of course, it’s a kids’ movie; I don’t expect the same film that features dancing bunnies and a flamboyant German unicorn to comment on labor unions or working conditions, and it doesn’t need to. But it’s dispiriting nonetheless that the best fantasy “Luck” can offer children is a corporate campus with neat elevators. It’s disappointing that the only audience that could really enjoy this movie are children who are too young yet to understand stories and won’t be bothered by the incoherence of this one. Near its climax, the movie asks us to imagine a world without luck, without serendipity, but instead of exploring its creative mess, the movie races to put things back where they were. Unfortunately, “Luck” has no imagination for anything that hasn’t been approved by management.