Luck review: Apple TV+ serves a sub-Pixar exercise whose ideas don’t really mesh

What is luck? A superstition when things go wrong? A miracle when things go right? A self-fulfilling prophecy reliant on mood and self-perception then? “Luck is not chance, it’s toil; fortune’s expensive smile is earned,” wrote Emily Dickinson. “When it comes to luck you make your own,” sang Bruce Springsteen. “Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect,” declared Ralph Waldo Emerson. Is luck even real or mere placebo? Those who believe in it have forever clung to totems, kept their fingers crossed, and knocked on wood. Not only do they believe luck to be qualitative, but also quantitative.

Good luck and bad luck are assembly-line commodities in the world of Luck, Skydance Animation’s debut feature. Sitting in parallel to the real world is a corporate fantasia of spiralling skyscrapers, futuristic vehicles and mythical inhabitants. Leprechauns and rabbits work in concert to manufacture lucky pennies. Ladybugs and cats are part of the logistics and distribution teams. Suited-up pigs head R&D departments like “Happy Accidents” and “Front Row Parking.” In charge of the whole operation is a pink dragon named Babe (Jane Fonda). What powers the place is the good luck contained in glowing green shards. Take the elevator right down to the basement: you will end up in the bad luck place, where goblins and trolls deal in the polar purple variety. Housed in this upside-down operation is an entire R&D department dedicated to dog poop like “Stepped in It” and “Tracked it in the House.” In between the two places is where lies the Randomizer, a machine managed by the moustachioed unicorn Jeff (Flula Borg) that disperses good luck and bad luck into our world in equal measure.

Only if there is such a thing as luck, it isn’t quite equal, is it? Some are born into great fortune. Others are plagued by misfortune. Like our protagonist Sam Greenfield (voiced by Eva Noblezada), whose life so far feels like one long “when it rains, it pours.” The movie drills home the point of just how unlucky Sam is right from its opening moments: she is shooting a dance number set to Madonna’s “Lucky Star” and the set collapses on her. Sam is a foster child who has aged out of the system. This is an animation movie after all. Not having parents is a narrative prerequisite. She is 18 and still yearns to find her “forever family.” But how she made it to 18 is a miracle in itself that contradicts her cursed luck. Every day is an obstacle course. As she moves into a new apartment, a sequence underlines, italicises and emboldens her struggles: she can’t open the door without the keys rolling into a manhole; she can’t go to the bathroom without a broom falling over and locking her inside; she can’t grab a sandwich without dropping it jam-side down. She is so used to bad luck that she is unfazed when she comes across a black cat. In fact, her luck changes for the better, as the cat leaves behind a lucky penny by accident. The moment she loses the penny, bad luck returns.

Peggy Holmes’ fourth animated feature may be an upgrade in terms of ambition and scale, but the end result is not the least bit enchanting. Despite its title, the movie itself hasn’t had the smoothest journey from production to distribution, seeing as the producer is ex-Pixar chief John Lasseter, who was ousted from the Disney-owned animation studio following allegations of sexual misconduct. The screenplay by Kiel Murray no doubt has earnest intentions. But those aren’t enough to prevent this exercise in Big Ideas from slipping on a banana peel and falling flat on its face.

Sam may run out of luck, but never out of empathy. As she couldn’t find her “forever family,” her only wish is for her younger foster sister Hazel (Adelynn Spoon) to find her own. In the quest to find a new penny, she follows the black cat, who she discovers can talk and is named Bob (Simon Pegg), into a portal that leads her to the Land of Luck. Bob is reluctant to help Sam, but concedes after she promises to help him find his own lost penny. The quest won’t come easy, and will present its own tedious obstacle course. Checkpoint gameplay mechanics are leveraged to not the most captivating results. Each obstacle is a chance to further explore the movie’s magical world. Bob, his leprechaun friend Gerry (Colin O’Donoghue) and every new person Sam meets will explain their world’s preposterous inner workings. The exposition is a plotty beast of laboured quirkiness that countermands whatever little charm the movie possesses.

All the colourful characters and frenetic world-building get mind-numbing after a point. Luck mimics the Pixar formula not by integrating its ideas organically with the story, but by using the story as a container for its ideas. The problem is these ideas start to engulf its animated delights whole. In the process, the movie loses its accessibility. If adults watching themselves struggle to keep up with the story without feeling overwhelmed, imagine the kids. For a debut studio effort, Skydance Animation’s own style and the movie’s own inventive personality are rarely on display. One of the rare instances comes in a chase sequence that juxtaposes the effortless ease with which Bob navigates the city vs the clumsy Sam slapsticking her way through.

The message here is to appreciate the good with the bad. If we only had good luck, joy and happiness all the time, their value depreciates. Only because we have our share of bad luck, despair and sadness do we come to appreciate the good. But it takes the wisdom of hindsight to realise what may seem like bad luck at times can ultimately be good too. It’s why the two are imagined as mirror images in the movie. Though it is hard to disagree with its message, it is also hard to appreciate a movie where the bad outweighs the good by considerable degree.

Luck is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru.

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