3258. Just My Luck (2006)

Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Chris Pine, Missy Pyle

Director: Donald Petrie

Running Time: 108 mins

Just My Luck is an American film about a successful young woman with incredible luck who seems to switch her fortunes with an extremely unlucky man that she kisses at a party.

Romantic comedies can feel like a very tired genre, so adding a dash of fantasy into the mix is more often than not a good way to freshen things up. Just Like Heaven, Yesterday, About Time and more are great examples of how a little bit of magic can really reinvigorate a tired rom-com formula.

However, Just My Luck is unfortunately an example of jhow fantasy can make a romantic comedy worse. Though perfectly harmless on the surface, the film leans way too heavily into a fantasy premise that it also doesn’t really mark out as fantasy, leaving you caught in two minds about how to approach the movie.

It might seem simple enough that one woman who has all the luck in the world and one man who never has any is clearly fantasy from the start, but Just My Luck tries to ground the fantasy in the real world a little too much.

As a result, it’s difficult to really know what to laugh at here, whether the fantasy really is fantasy or just some preposterous plot device that the film pretends is perfectly valid. That, right from the start, really derails Just My Luck.

As luck would have it, though, the film does feature two rather likable lead performances from Lindsay Lohan and Chris Pine. Though the pair don’t share the screen quite as much as most romantic comedies, both are entertaining throughout, and really play up the farce of their hyper-lucky or hyper-unlucky fortunes.

Admittedly, they don’t quite have the dynamic chemistry to make this a particularly romantic movie, and the eventual love story that the film inevitably ends up following feels rather forced as a result. Still, as far as the characters go, Just My Luck isn’t anywhere near as disappointing as its poorly-executed fantasy premise would suggest.

Overall, Just My Luck really is a bit of a mixed bag. Enjoyable and harmless on the surface, it’s also an example of how trying to change up a tired formula can sometimes make things worse, with a poorly-executed fantasy premise that make the movie a far more awkward watch throughout. So, that’s why I’m giving it a 6.4.