So here we are again with another movie
that's damn near impossible for someone like me to give any
kind of commentary that would be worth reading. I need
my movies to be about something, to have some depth to it,
even if the depth this movie is mining is gold nuggets of
crap. That gives us something to talk to you about,
which is what we do here quite honestly as we don't actually
review movies, we just talk to you about them. This
brings us to noted director Steven Frears and his drama /
comedy 'Lay the Favorite' which gives me nothing. It's
not particularly bad, it's certainly not good, it's kind of
like walking into a Walmart and seeing a litho of great
painting. It's pretty to look at an all, but it has no
soul. That's pretty much the way I felt about 'Lay the
Favorite'.
Beth, as played with bubbly wonder by the British darling
Rebecca Hall, who seemed to be channeling the ghost of Shannon
Elizabeth with her performance, is a heart of gold door to
door stripper in Tallahassee who has decided to dump this town
for the good life of a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas.
The problem is that apparently, like tenured college
professors, cocktail waitresses do that gig until death so
that dream is put on hold for poor Beth. Fortunately she
gets turned on to Dink (Bruce Willis) and his gambling
enterprise. We can't get into exactly what Dink does
with his gambling enterprise, but it is legal and Beth, along
with her head for numbers, is a natural for it.
Unfortunately what is also natural is that when a pretty
younger woman gives some attention to a crusty older dude,
things happen. Even if this crusty older dudes wife,
Tulip, looks just like Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Tulip doesn't take too kindly hot younger
chicks trying to take her man and let's Dink know she's not
happy with the situation, leading Dink to let the young woman,
who pines for him so deeply, go on her way. Beth is sad,
but all will be better eventually. At this point,
personally, I'm wondering what this movie is about and I can
tell you it's about none of the stuff I just mentioned.
That's all setup and character development I think.
Eventually Beth meets Jeremy (Joshua
Jackson), the dashing New York journalist who is in Vegas on
holiday, and eventually Beth ends up in New York with young
Jeremy. This movie still isn't about anything in
particular at this point, just us watching Beth stumble
through life.
Eventually the plot kind of kicks in, more or less, when Beth
starts working for Rosie (Vince Vaughn) the New York
bookie. Now Rosie isn't a bad guy or anything, because
this movie doesn't really have any bad people in it, despite
the fact it deals with gambling, some of it illegal, but
through some convoluted rigmarole dealing with Rosie, Beth in
Costa Rica… don't ask… some welched bets and Jeremy the
Journalist Who Should Know Better doing some illegal
bookmaking, Jeremy gets himself into trouble. Now it's
up to Beth and her best friends she left back in Vegas to come
together and get Jeremy out of trouble. Roll credits and
be happy.
Recently we saw a film called 'Maximum Conviction' starring
Steven Seagal and Stone Cold Steve Austin, in the article we
scribbled about that movie we spoke of the Resultant
Expectations to Expected Results cinematic theorem. The
results we expected from that film were relatively low, and it
surpassed those low expectations. This movie, directed
by Steven Frears who has given us classic gems such as 'High
Fidelity' and 'The Queen' just to name a few, and featuring of
cast of established stars and hot young up and comers had
expectations that were high, but alas the expected result were
very disappointing. Why did this happen? I don't
know and I don't care dissect it too much either, but there
was something missing in 'Lay the Favorite' that the skill of
Steven Frears, the charm of Bruce Willis, the shtick of Vince
Vaughn nor the beauty of Catherine Zeta-Jones couldn't fix.
I guess we could lay the blame for the blasé feel of this film
on the shoulders Rebecca Hall who is in virtually every scene
in this movie, and true enough her character wasn't all that
endearing despite Ms. Hall's best wide-eyed and innocent
efforts, and the fact that the only clothes she seemed to own
were tank tops two sizes too small and a pair of Daisy
Dukes. But we're not going to saddle the girl with that
kind of responsibility, because we've seen Rebecca Hall in
plenty of films and we know she can act. No, with most
movies such as this that fail, ones where budget and talent
isn't an issue, it usually comes down to the story that they
are trying to tell us. Basically 'Lay the Favorite' is
about Beth's adventures, and Beth isn't all that interesting
to follow around for ninety plus minutes. Considering
the plot is threadbare, Beth has no real discernible goal,
there's no bad guy, not much conflict, and pretty much
everybody in this movie is pleasant, friendly and amiable… if
you don't immediately take an interest in watching Beth do
whatever Beth does, then I don't think that viewer will take
much of an interest in what's going on in this movie. I
guess you could blame Rebecca Hall for not making her
character more interesting, but we'd probably opt for blaming
a poor adaptation of Beth Raymer's memoir which by all
accounts is supposed to be very enjoyable. I mean they
did try to make a movie out of it, right?
If you want to watch a competent film with some attractive
stars in it, the by all means roll with 'Lay the
Favorite'. Just keep your expectations low, which will
be difficult with the lineup this movie presents to us.
