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Trailer for "Lucky You"

Televised poker strikes me as something to turn to only after exhausting the offerings on the Watching Paint Dry Channel, or perhaps the Golf Channel. But many people do enjoy watching card players stare each other down on cable, and those are the people for whom Lucky You is presumably intended. Problem is, those are the only people who could possibly get any enjoyment out of this, and even a lot of them are likely to find it thin on entertainment value. Eric Bana, who has so slimmed down and overcome his Australian accent that he is now in danger of being mistaken for Patrick Duffy, stars as Huck Cheever, who makes his living playing poker in Las Vegas. He lives in the shadow of his father (Robert Duval), a former literature professor (hence his son’s name) who abandoned his family around the time he discovered high-stakes poker. Because Huck often loses as big as he wins, he’s desperately trying to raise a stake to get into the World Series of Poker,” which is just what it sounds like. The script throws him a love interest in the person of Drew Barrymore as Billie, a small-town girl come to work as a singer in Vegas. There’s some nonsense about Billie and Huck sharing the ability to read people’s feelings but using them to different ends, and about Huck’s tensions regarding his recently returned father, but the only thing this film has any interest in is photographing poker matches. And while a certain amount of audience oohing and ahhing during the interminable final match indicates that those with a taste for the subject may find this engrossing, I can’t help but question the appeal of watching a fictional gambling match. And that this dull-as-dishwater drama says nothing about the emotional and psychic dangers of obsessive gambling is a black eye for director Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential, Wonder Boys) and writer Eric Roth (The Insider, The Good Shepherd), for both of whom this serves as a career low point. Did they lose a bet or something?