The movie about two people unintentionally switching their luck, with McFly!
Just My Luck is a 2006 Romantic Comedy film directed by Donald Petrie and starring Chris Pine and Lindsay Lohan and was, apparently, supposed to be a vehicle to launch McFly's careers across the pond from their native UK in America.
One night Ashley, a woman (played by Lohan) with all the luck in the world meets, kisses, and somehow switches her luck with Jake (played by Pine), the unluckiest man in the world, at a masquerade ball. He's been trying to get McFly (Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter, and Harry Judd, playing fictionalized versions of themselves) a record deal in New York City, but his extremely bad luck has always prevented him from doing so. Meanwhile, Ashley's luck has helped her a lot with her life, as she basically breezes through life, finding money on the ground, being able to talk a record executive into a deal with the company she works for with no prior experience in negotiating (just sitting in on meetings), and just being all around lucky. After their lucks are switched, both scramble to try to right their situations with the new luck-based hands they've been dealt.
Tropes:
- Actor Allusion:
- McFly actually did get popular really fast in the UK and also got a record contract pretty fast when Tom Fletcher was removed from Busted and then cowrote a lot of the songs from Busted's second album with James Bourne from the band that turned into big hits that their agency let him audition people to be in a new band. McFly then went on to become the youngest members of a band to have an album debut at #1 in the UK, which was a record previously held by The Beatles. James also cowrote a lot of the songs from McFly's first album.
- This isn't the first time Lohan starred in a "Freaky Friday" Flip movie. Hell, that wasn't even the first time. The only difference here is that this isn't a remake of a Disney movie.
- Advertised Extra: British band McFly play fictionalized versions of themselves in the film and even get an "and introducing" credit, but they're barely in it, only relegated to several scenes involving them either practicing their songs, recording them, or playing them live. From how they act in the film and in behind the scenes material, there was probably more scenes shot with them too, but they were cut for some reason.
- As Himself: McFly as a version of themselves where they didn't get famous in the UK already trying to make it big in New York City.
- Born Lucky: Ashley.
- Born Unlucky: Jake.
- Contrived Coincidence: The film just runs on them. From the record exec that Jake tries to get to listen to McFly's demo tape being one who Ashley talked into coming to a masquerade ball that she has to plan, since she came up with the idea, to her boss being stuck in an elevator to give her that opportunity, to a friend she invited to the ball being a male escort, to Ashley's house getting flooded, to Ashley getting zapped by electricity, to Harry from the band getting stuck underneath the stage then subsequently appearing on it by rising on a lift. Some of it can be chalked up to bad luck, but the rest is just Ashley being dumb, or it not even relating to her at all.
- Domestic Appliance Disaster: Jake pities Ashley when she is rained on with no umbrella, and lets her go to his apartment, so she can wash her wet clothes. She inevitably turns his laundry room into a pool of bubbles (being distracted by a shirtless Jake while putting powder and being unable to find the stop button after).
- Disproportionate Retribution: Ashley gets her luck switched with Jake for little to no reason. She's not a bad person, just not all that bright, or is at least lacking a bit in common sense. The punishments she goes through in the film while she has his luck make you wonder if the filmmakers had it against people who'd achieved more success than them in life who didn't deserve it. Jake also suffers from this, since he's just an average nice guy who just has terrible luck. The cartoony ways they get punished for being unlucky don't help much.
- Food Porn: The yummy brunch a starved Ashley spot in a restaurant after a night in custody.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Of a sort, with the two main characters switching their lucks. It's probably also why they casted Lohan in the movie, since she'd previously starred in Disney's remake of the trope namer. They, subsequently, also essentially switch lifestyles, as Ashley starts to work Jake's old job at a bowling alley and he starts living in a penthouse suite after landing the record deal.
- Jukebox Musical: Seems like it's supposed to be one, since all of the songs performed in it are McFly's own material from their last 2 albums prior to it. Ironically, their song 'Just My Luck' never appears in the film, despite it fitting with the film and being on the soundtrack.
- Magic Kiss: Ashley and Jake's kisses can switch their respective lucks. In the end, they decide to kiss Jake's cousin simultaneously on her cheeks to be normal, and give her the good luck. It works.
- Love at First Sight: Ashley and Jake, who make out after dancing together for a few minutes. While Jake have a mask on, and they don't know the other one's name. A few days later, they don't recognize each other in a restaurant, but Jake feel immediately the need to help Ashley.
- Peggy and Antonio. The fortune teller even pick "the lovers" tarot card for them, right after they met. As Ashley has arranged their meeting and she just caught bad luck, they're arrested by the police as Antonio is actually an escort boy, seeming all of this is subverted. But it ends double subverted later, when Ashley is lucky again and cross Peggy and Antonio 's path. Despite the latter occupation, they reconciled and are engaged.
- Pop Punk: McFly's songs in the movie. They even rerecorded their earlier hit, '5 Colours in Her Hair' for the movie in this style, which became how they would play it in concerts over the original Surf Rock version. Arguably, the song fits better in this genre, given the subject-matter and time it was written, than its original one.
- Shout-Out: When the rest of the band were coming out on stage towards the end, Harry was playing 'Carousel' by Blink-182.
- Right after Jake saved him, Damon Phillips nickname the latter "Spider-man". It is quite appropriate as Jake is unlucky, lives in New York (and by his aunt), is probably orphaned, in Perpetual Poverty, and in love with a red-headed girl.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- The movie confuses some things with bad luck that are really Ashley just being stupid. Some examples include: Ashley turning on water from a bath tub faucet on a plugged-in hair dryer, which then explodes, and her trying to replace a light bulb at the bowling alley, but not turning off the lightswitch before doing so and getting electrocuted when she put the bulb in the socket.
- Jake suffers from this a bit too, like the fact that he stepped in a puddle of water after it had just rained, or that he grabbed a $5 bill from the trash that the record executive he was following used to clean up some of his dog's crap off the walkway in a park.
- X Meets Y: Invoked. Jake, rather correctly, describes McFly's sound as "Early Beatles meets blink-182."
