Lay the Favorite

Beth (Rebecca Hall) is stripping in private homes to make ends meet. On the advise of motel neighbor Holly (Laura Prepon), she goes to work for bookie Dink (Bruce Willis) and finds that she's actually quite good at it. She's good with numbers. People like dealing with her on the phone. And Dink likes her a lot. The problem is Dink's wife Tulip (Catherine Zeta-Jones) doesn't want him to like her so much. When Dink starts to lose money, things blow up.

When you consider the talents in front of and behind the camera, it's a wonder how things could go so wrong. Award winning director Stephen Frears is the biggest culprit. The script may need better jokes, but it's mainly Frears who couldn't extract any laughs from this. In the end, this is mostly his responsibility.

Rebecca Hall is doing a squeaky-voice fast-talking bobble head doll. It's completely fake, and leaves my head shaking. It doesn't fit her at all. If her mannerisms are meant to be funny, it got no laughs from me. Everybody else is doing a competent if not very impressive work. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Bruce Willis could have been an explosive couple but they're not. The only interesting acting comes from Vince Vaughn who plays a wildman bookie.

Not much goes right in this movie. It is absolutely not funny. It is watchable, but afterward I wonder why I watched it.

Rebecca Hall does an excellent job as a naive bookie in Lay. The other actors, Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Vince Vaughn are great in their supporting roles, but.... This movie was poorly written: the jokes fall flat, the script doesn't develop enough so that the audience can care about the characters, the gambling is explained only enough so that gamblers can understand what the actors are doing and there is very little plot action that's not inside an office looking at TV screens with sports games on them. Stephen Frears, the director, has done some major work such as "the Queen," and "High Fidelity," and i would think he was brought in to save this, but it's shot so plainly, like a made for TV movie. I get the feeling that this was filmed in a couple weeks and everyone involved wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. I give it 3 out of 10 for Rebecca Hall's efforts and the fact that she comes off as incredibly sexy, but other then that, it's totally forgettable.

Based on Beth Raymer's "Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling," this is a fun and entertaining movie.

A sleeper at the box office for sure, but for those seeking 90 minutes to unwind and forget about reality for a while, this film takes its viewers on a fun, if not entirely realistic, ride through the lives of professional gamblers.

Other reviewers have criticized this movie for being simple, but that's what gives the movie its charm. (The book is probably more detailed and was well reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and the New York Times Book Review).

Don't compare this movie to Rounders (Matt Damon & Edward Norton) or 21 (Kevin Spacey). It's not a drama with complicated plot lines, but a lighthearted, romantic comedy with a fun cast that's easy to watch.

I'm generally a fan of comedies, and tend to prefer intelligent comedies to most dramas. Lay The Favorite wasn't funny, it wasn't entertaining and it felt so scattered that it was hard to follow any of the character's motivations. This felt like one of those movies where they just wanted to have a bunch of named stars so they could have fun on set. If the movie was allowed to be slightly slower or if they allowed the movie to be slightly longer it might have been able to gain footing but in it's current state by the time you've figured out why someone is doing something they're already four moves ahead of that. If you just want to see southern women depicted as ditsy sex objects and older men that wear Hawaiian shirts and gamble then this movie is for you.

Until a friend suggested going to see this movie, I hadn't even heard of it, and other than what I gathered from skimming the synopsis in the cinema-foyer listings-leaflet -it seemed to be some kind of comedy, and starred Bruce Willis as a gambler-, I wasn't sure what it was about.

And now, after sitting through all ninety-four incoherent, enervating minutes of it, I'm still not sure. One of my friends, who is usually uncritical and easily entertained, said he thought that "The Tree of Life" made more sense than this film.

Unlike Terrence Malick's "metaphysical masterpiece" however, there is no confusion here as to what the subject matter is (it's the life of professional gamblers), what is confusing is how that subject matter is presented, and how the narrative is (or isn't) constructed around it. For example, what was the intended tone of the movie, what was the film-maker trying to convey? Was it supposed to be amusing? entertaining? or moving? were we supposed to be excited, or to feel intellectually stimulated? Who knows. My main emotional reaction to the film was a kind of repulsion, because I felt like I was being exploited, like the film was insulting my intelligence and my basic humanity. Like I might expect to feel if I'd been suckered into spending an evening feeding coins to a slot machine.

The first 10 minutes were slightly amusing to be fair, but after that that it just descends into complete mind-numbing absurdity. You might think Vince Vaughn would offer some comic-relief but, for the brief appearances he makes, he's just going through the motions (though it's still the most convincing and consistent performance of the movie).

There was no tension, or intrigue, at all, for the first seventy minutes. I mean nothing seems to really matter to any of the characters, they behave so unrealistically, and incoherently. And when things finally seem to get real and there is some adversity for the characters to face, you just don't care because you can't feel sympathy for such pantomime puppets as these.

They could have gone more into the details, the mechanics, of the gambling operation, that might have been interesting, but they thought it would be better to pad the story out with completely vapid romantic-interest scenes.

Maybe, with the attraction of Willis, Zeta-Jones, Vaughn, (and Rebecca Hall's legs), it was thought that such things as humour, narrative direction, consistency and pacing, character development, etc., were unnecessary.

After seeing the movie, I learned that it was adapted from a book, that at least goes some way towards explaining why there were so many undeveloped, seemingly irrelevant details, obviously included for the sake of those that have read it. For example, Holly (Laura Pripon's character) keeps warning Beth that she is becoming "one of us", in the book there might be context for this but when you watch the film you're just like "what is this I don't even...."

But, even for those that have read the book, maybe more-so, this film will only bemuse and bewilder. While I'm informed the book was written in a 'picaresque' -and no doubt droll (not to mention self-deprecating) style-, on screen, without the benefit of a narrator, this translates into characters, like Beth, who starts off as some kind of cartoon-airhead-bimbo-stripper, sunbathing with baby-oil on her back, ending up as an extraordinarily articulate, mathematical genius, who goes on to become a writer... Rebecca Hall was a bad choice.

And another thing, I couldn't help feeling that this film was not-too-subtly trying to indoctrinate me. Maybe I'm just paranoid but, beyond just the obvious product placements (nice Mercedes being driven by Bruce Willis' Mr. Nice character), it's like they're glamorizing the lifestyle, and completely glossing over any moral issues, and Beth just follows the money from Las Vegas to New York to Curaçao -are we supposed to admire that, to forget about community, and meaningful relationships, just go where the money is and keep working and consuming?-.

Whatever, I've wasted enough time on this drivel already, please heed my warning and don't waste yours.