I still find it immeasurably silly that adults write reviews for children’s movies. Why aren’t more people taking their kids, asking them what they thought, and publishing that? They are the target demographic, after all. Do I understand that there are instances where parents want to see if something is “ok” before they let their kids watch it? Sure. Does that take away any ridiculousness from the fact that I am sitting here to write a review about an unlucky orphan who receives and subsequently loses a lucky coin given to her by a black cat with a Scottish accent? Ah dinnae ken.

Luck is one of those kids movies that exists in the small but yet still vacuous space between the animated giants of Disney/Pixar, Dreamworks, and Illumination. In the last decade Illumination has made a name for themselves, largely propped on the shoulders of their monumental success Despicable Me. The other two studios have controlled the animated feature game for decades. Skydance lives in this mysterious place where other animation films go to shine or fade into obscurity. It’s not all that dissimilar from the gaming space, where monoliths like Microsoft and Sony, Activision/Blizzard (which may be part of Microsoft soon), EA, and Ubisoft demand attention for the majority of releases and indie games sneak out in between mammoth releases with aspirations of capturing even an iota of attention. There are stories of success and failure here, obviously. The same can be said for animated films. Though I am aware the metaphor isn’t perfect, I do believe it holds some truth. Perhaps even a base measuring stick to start with. There are far fewer animation studios putting out features than there are game studios. That’s the first point. But take into account the fact that there were roughly 83 (source) animated films released in 2021 compared to the astronomically high number of approximately 11,184 indie games in the same year (source, “95% of Steam releases are indie”), you can start to see that the proportionality of these releases is, in a way, similar. In games the ratio of indie release to AAA releases is 18:1. In film the ratio of everyone else vs the big three I named above is 12:1. I challenge you to name more than three of the animated pictures that came out last year that weren’t made by Disney/Pixar, Illumination, or Dreamworks. I wouldn’t dare ask the same question of a gamer, despite my particular work making the task somewhat easy for me. The fact of the matter is, the larger studios dominate attention. Period. So when a smaller player puts out a movie there is a risk factor that comes along with it. We should all want these movies to see some form of success.

While I’m not sure if Luck will vault itself up above the likes of Minions: Rise of Gru or Turning Red I can say, if you were to ask my five year old, it was a “funny, silly, pretty good movie. I like kitties!” Really, what more can you ask for?

Describing Luck truly is as simple as I stated it before. But for the sake of the review, I will add a bit more detail. Sam is an orphan who has aged out, something that happens when kids at a home for parentless children turn eighteen and are no longer the direct responsibility of the social work system. Sam is portrayed as a young woman mired by bad luck, an attribute she decides was the deciding factor for her never finding a forever home. As she is placed in an apartment by the girl’s home and starts her first job, we get a glimpse into the machinations of her luck. A broom tips over and locks her in the bathroom, her toast falls jam side down, her bicycle tire is flat, she bungles chores at work. It’s comedically miserable, very much in line with what children find, actually, very funny. As a parent with passing spurts of clumsiness (don’t we all? Please say yes?) I can personally attest to the fact that my daughter thinks this particular brand of humor is very funny. She giggled constantly in the theater. Win number one.

After her first day of work, Sam, disappointed in her rotten luck, sits on a curb outside a diner and snacks on a sandwich. When a black cat approaches, our agonized protagonist relates to the universal symbol of bad luck and offers a bit of her sandwich. The cat gladly obliges itself and then, seemingly in payment for a kind gesture, deposits a lucky penny on the sidewalk next to Sam. The next day, everything that went wrong for Sam goes miraculously right. Not only is her luck not bad, it has actually swung full around and has instead been replaced by very good luck. When she is carrying the penny, in her hand or on her person, her luck is completely reversed. So you can imagine the immediate groan I muttered when she sets the penny on the toilet paper receptacle before she uses the restroom and somehow manages to knock it into the automatically flushing porcelain throne. At the end of the day, sitting outside the same diner, eating the same meal, she encounters the same cat and recounts her blunderous mistake. Only this time the cat doesn’t meow and walk away, instead the cat, wide-eyed and gobsmacked shouts, “Yew lost mah pennay!” I hope you’ll forgive the attempt at writing a Scottish baroque, it sounds far funnier in my head.

What follows is a “funny, silly, pretty good movie” about a cat and a human as they venture through the Land of Luck, hoping to find a way to locate the missing penny while avoiding the authorities, racing against the clock, and causing all manner of mayhem on their journey. It’s a perfectly fine movie. Is it INCREDIBLE!? No. But also…like…so what? I teared up at the end, and I know that isn’t nearly difficult enough a reaction to elicit from me when viewing sappy stuff, but you know what? It worked on me! Upon leaving the theater I came across the other reviewers talking to the marketing company representative about what they thought of the film and I couldn’t help by chuckle as I stood behind them with my hand on my daughter’s head. “So no one really enjoyed it?” Asks the rep. “No.” Comes the response from most of the critics standing in a little circle by the door. A specific critic pipes up, “It’s too complex! What kid is going to understand all that? Go here, then that doesn’t work so go here, then that doesn’t work so go to the next place. It’s just too much!” Let me be the first to say, I find it deeply funny when I get to see people underestimate children and catch a comeback in real time. It just happens so infrequently that I rarely get the satisfaction. At this moment the rep sees me and my daughter standing behind them and looks my daughter right in the eye and asks, “Did you like it?” And without missing a beat she nods her head furiously and says, “YUP!” In the following laughter and hand wringing that follows she looks up at me and says, “I’m smart daddy.” Yes you are, baby girl. Yes you are.

So I’m a dad who writes reviews for movies, currently writing a review for a children’s movie and I am perfectly aware that my opinion DOES NOT MATTER in this situation. So I will let my five year old daughter’s words be your motivation to take your five-ish year olds to the theater to watch a movie for five year olds. “It was funny, silly, and pretty good.” Don’t ask anybody else for their opinion. Take that and run with it. Excuse me while I go and figure out how to get my daughter into more movies so she can surprise more old men with how smart she is.

@LubWub
~Caleb

Luck (Skydance Animation, PG)