Reviews WesternAnimation / Luck 2022

Skydance Doesn't Luck Out with their First Attempt

Regardless of the situation surrounding his departure from Pixar, John Lasseter has undeniably left a massive impact on today’s animation landscape. Throughout his tenure with the studio, Pixar was generally considered the gold standard for critical and commercial success. Still, Lasseter wasn’t immune from producing flops, the first one (at least critically) being Cars, which actually could be described as his passion project. I bring this film up because it and Luck have the same key problem: lackluster worldbuilding.

There are many unanswered questions surrounding the land of Luck (why is an equal amount of bad luck produced if workplace conditions are far less favorable down there?), but the biggest sin the worldbuilding commits is the absence of a meaningful connection to the real world. For an organization that supposedly constantly serves several billion people, the total headcount is suspiciously low at a generous maximum of a few thousand. Near the end of the movie, the machine that distributes luck is shut down for a few minutes, but we never see the consequences this has on Earth. This was treated as a cataclysmic event in Luck, but the Earth was apparently completely unaffected by any of this.

It’s a shame that the fantastical worldbuilding is noncohesive since I actually find the message this film was trying to go for quite strong. Bad luck is inevitable, and occasionally it can seem to devalue your life, but a good attitude can outweigh all of it. Sam is a pretty inspiring protagonist, having a positive attitude despite her nonideal family life and earning appreciation from her manager even with her numerous bad breaks. I think the lesson that you should persist even when circumstances are not favorable needs to be prominent, especially in an era where blaming anything but yourself if you don’t see immediate results seems to be commonplace. Sadly, the tour of the convoluted alternate universe takes up almost the entire runtime after the first 20 minutes, leaving little room for real-world character development outside of predictable beats.

The animation, while polished, is instantly forgettable. Robots created a more captivating Rube Goldberg machine 17 years ago, and the character design could be described as basic. Speaking of imitating previous animated films, the climax is essentially ripped from a previous Pixar movie (replace luck with __). While there, it naturally fit as a good resolution, here, it really isn’t a compelling superior option. Would entirely good luck be in any way worse than a mix of good and bad luck?

Skydance’s debut, much like Lasseter's passion project, has a strong central moral but is severely hampered by a poorly developed fantasy world. Had the film abandoned the flawed universe in favor of fleshing out developments in the real world, this actually could have been a gem. As is, Luck doesn’t come close to Pixar’s pre-Cars efforts. Hopefully their next couple projects are more cohesive.