Lucky Girl (2001)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Katlin Palmerston (Elisha Cuthbert) is a math-whiz high school student from a middle class home. She starts gambling to save up for an European trip with best friend Cheryl. She takes money from the girls at poker and the boys with football. She even sets up her own betting pool. With a run of bad luck and bad bets, she is in deep trouble. Popular girl Janice's sketchy brother Ron Lunderman sets up a poker game. Katlin wins big and starts dating Ron. The computer gambling continues and everything spirals out of control. She borrows from the wrong couple and they have a creepy way to settle the debt. Her mother (Sherry Miller) rides to the rescue.This is very much a lesson-filled movie of the week. It's basic and overtly dramatic. There is an inevitability to the plot. Elisha Cuthbert is what shines in this movie. She shows her beauty and her charisma. She's also young enough and pretty close to the 17 year old character. It helps to make it more real and visceral. The last act is quite creepy and unforgettable. It would help to have more original twists but this is strictly a "very special episode" of whatever teen soap.

I don't see how you could like Elisha Cuthbert and not want to see this.Don't read any further unless you hate Cuthbert and wouldn't see it if you didn't like great stories. "Cuthbert won the 2001 Gemini (Canadian television awards) for best actress in a dramatic program or mini-series and Sherry Miller, who plays her mother, won the Gemini for best supporting actress." Both well deserved. This was among the best Canadian made-for-TV movies I've seen - up there with "Human Cargo", "Prairie Giant", "Trudeau", all of which had big budgets and over four hours to tell their great stories, and drew on true life stranger than fiction).This movie had a small budget. What it did have, was Elisha Cuthbert, whose expressive face dominates the film, and rightfully so, since it's the ebbs and flows of her optimism and despair that we're following as she (spoiler follows!) becomes a gambling addict. The vulnerability of smart kids who think they're invulnerable, the easy links from mildly illegal football pools to more illegal organized house poker parties to taking pills and then hanging out in quite illegal after-hours casinos, were all made without preaching. At each stage you want her to get out and it's hard not to yell "get out!" at the screen, because Cuthbert is never unsympathetic or stupid. She's always almost out of the situation and trying to get wholly out of it, is what gets her in deeper trouble.I found her parents' behaviour especially effective dramatically and believable. Not only Sherry Miller, who gets the best "mom" part I've seen in any TV movie, and who deals with each situation appropriately and decisively, but the hedge-fund-manager Dad who understands gambling as a process intellectually but isn't there emotionally enough to help his daughter deal with its psychological effects. These are believable suburban parents for a character like Cuthbert's Kaitlin, who's not at all "spoiled" but does feel she's got a lot of rope before she hangs... all of which she uses. The affair with her 22-year-old boyfriend also makes perfect sense - he's a coward when dealing with the loan shark, and also with her, and even with her mother - though he obviously is the one who makes the whole house of cards fall in on the shark in the end.It's real hard not to cheer when Mom takes down the creepy pornographer who's threatening to "tear her family apart". I like that she goes back specifically to do it. You get a real sense of the mama-bear pushed to the edge to protect her cub. Though technically the loan shark Blair is not the guy who caused her daughter's dilemma (she owns it, completely), he does make a nice side character demonstrating how awful it is to live in Toronto suburbs. Yup, those are your neighbours in Markham, folks. I liked how ordinary the couple was, and how they were obviously turned on by the power they gained over young girls with the loan shark game - obvious sociopaths who make your skin crawl. Just like real suburbs! I rate this a 9 because of what it managed to do on such a low budget - you get RIGHT into the head of a gambling addict and you're THERE with her through the worst of it - becoming a slave of sociopaths in Markham or Surrey or wherever that was.

This is a very good TV movie about the perils of gambling and the addiction of compulsive gambling, especially if you happen to be a teenager.The main character in this film starts out (as they usually do in these things) as a winner at gambling on the Internet and at school, where she gambles on sports. She runs into difficulty (as they usually do in these things) when she starts losing. In one disturbing scene - the best scene in the film - she winds up at the home of a very strange couple. Without much dialogue, there is a very real sense of impending danger and sleaze. Truly excellent.Elisha Cuthbert does a great job as the losing teen who just can't quit. The rest of the cast is very strong as well. The lovely Sherry Miller, who plays Cuthbert's mother, always reminds me of a blond Mary Tyler Moore.

Well, I guess that the opinions of this film vary so much because it all depends on whether or not the viewer was able to relate the content and the film overall. Personally, I thought the film was incredible and was one of the more realistic films I've seen in a long time. However, like I said, if someone can't relate to a lot of it, I can see how the movie would just be considered 'so-so' or worse by them. I am 18 years old so I was 17 not that long ago. In having a young person write dialog for the script, I thought it enhanced the film greatly because certain things that the girls do and especially say are so realistic amongst teenagers these days, and yes I have known eighteen/seventeen year olds who got addicted to gambling, which leads to drugs,smoking and alcohol that are so extremely close to what is portrayed in the film. In my opinion, I thought the camera gave it a documentary like feel that made it even more realistic and it wouldn't have had the same effect shot any other way. Also, the way the film changed into dreary color schemes during Kaitlin's (Elisha Cuthbert) downward spiral was also a nice touch. I'm aware it won for some awards (to all the people who say the direction, editing etc. was awful, I mean come on how bad could it be getting nominated for best editing at eh?) and I was glad to see it up for some DGC Craft Awards as well. I'm not positive if it was up for any Geminis, but it was deserving of nomination(s) without a doubt. Acting was amazing all around, Sherry Miller was outstanding as the mother, Elisha Cuthbert was so realistic and reminded me exactly of a girl that I knew growing up.Charlotte Sulivan didn't have many lines but had a great presence nonetheless, and I believe the most incredible performance of the entire film was delivered by Evan Sabba.This movie is simply wonderful! Elisha Cuthbert is a terrific actress, and I have a feeling that her career is just going to take off! This film is a great, depressing gambling flick. It's not one of those ordinary, could-never-happen-in-a-million-years stories, because stranger things have happened. I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone who's in a too-happy mood. Excellent Film, I look forward to seeing John Fawcett's next project...