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Fox Home Entertainment presents
Just My Luck (2006)

"You're firing me? you don’t even pay me!"
- Jake Hardin (Chris Pine)

Review By: Chuck Aliaga   
Published: August 23, 2006

Stars: Lindsay Lohan, Chris Pine
Other Stars: Faizon Love, Missi Pyle, McFly
Director: Donald Petrie

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for (some brief sexual references)
Run Time: 01h:42m:35s
Release Date: August 22, 2006
UPC: 024543255161
Genre: romantic comedy

Style Grade	Substance Grade	Image Transfer Grade	Audio Transfer Grade	Extras Grade
D	D-	A	A	C

DVD Review

Lindsay Lohan is seemingly at something of a crossroads, both in her personal and professional lives. Since the brilliant Mean Girls made her a household name, Lohan's exposure has been mostly limited to the pages of popular magazines. Her only film projects since then have been fluff like Herbie: Fully Loaded and a respectable role in the ensemble Robert Altman film, A Prairie Home Companion. In between, she appeared in the romantic comedy Just My Luck, but unfortunately, people rightfully stayed away.

Ashley Albright (Lohan) is a PR executive in Manhattan whose days run more smoothly than the average commuters. Everything tends to go Ashley's way, whether it's easily grabbing a cab, accidentally dialing a radio station's contest line and being the correct caller, meeting a hunky guy in an elevator, or being at the right place at the right time to land one of her firm's biggest accounts. Then, during a masquerade ball she's organized, Ashley meets the unluckiest person in the world, Jack Hardin (Chris Pine). This guy works at a bowling alley and carries bad luck with him wherever he goes. When Ashley and Jack share a dance and kiss, their luck changes drastically, with everything beginning to go right for him and terribly wrong for her. When Ashley learns that only another kiss by Jack will reverse her fortunes, she sets out to track him down.

If the dialogue in the opening five minutes don't give you an idea of just how insipid Just My Luck is, an even bigger turn-off is the endless sequence where Lohan's character kisses nearly every guy she comes across. Essentially an hour and forty minutes of mindless nonsense, the story is extremely difficult to sit through. You might just spend more time shrugging your shoulders than investing in whatever little story exists.

Lohan and the other actors are the least of the problems. The inane story was crafted by four different writers to achieve the final screenplay. Their tale is supposed to center on the large role that luck can play in one's life, but instead offers a series of "unlucky" events brought on by their characters' own idiotic actions.

I couldn't help but think that Lohan's overall career path is designed to mirror that of mega-star Reese Witherspoon. If she continues to choose scripts like this, though, Lohan has no chance to ever reach Hollywood's A-List. She seems to be having a good time with this material, but the juvenile script and director Donald Petrie's (Miss Congeniality) cutesy style doomed the project from the start. If Lohan can get past this misfire, tone down her tabloid exposure, and appear in films of Mean Girls caliber, she might still have a bright future ahead of her.

Rating for Style: D
Rating for Substance: D-

 

Image Transfer

	One	Two
Aspect Ratio	1.85:1 - Widescreen	1.33:1 - P&S
Original Aspect Ratio	yes	no
Anamorphic	yes	no

Image Transfer Review: This two-sided disc features both 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and pan and scan transfers. Both are exactly what we would expect from such a new film, benefiting from sharp, detailed images and a spot-on color scheme. Brightness and contrast levels never waver, while the few blacks that appear are appropriately deep.

Image Transfer Grade: A

 

Audio Transfer

	Language	Remote Access
DS 2.0	Spanish, French	yes
Dolby Digital 5.1	English	yes

Audio Transfer Review: The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is a typical romantic comedy mix. The pop soundtrack utilizes all of the surround channels and there's some nice separation during a few sequences. The dialogue is always crisp and easy to understand, while what little bass there is works well with the rest of the mix.

Audio Transfer Grade: A

 

Disc Extras

Full Motion menu with music
Scene Access with 28 cues and remote access
Subtitles/Captions in English, Spanish with remote access
3 Deleted Scenes
2 Featurette(s)
Packaging: Keep Case
1 Disc
2-Sided disc(s)
Layers: single

Extras Review: There are a few extras, which are spread out over the disc's two sides. A two-minute featurette, Look of Luck, touches on the film via interviews with story/screenwriter I. Marlene King, costume designer Gary Jones, and other crew members. There's also the eight-minute McFly Behind the Scenes, which looks at the band's big scene.

Three deleted/extended scenes run for a total of six minutes.

Extras Grade: C

 

Final Comments

Just My Luck is an ill-conceived romantic comedy, a mess from beginning to end, leaving Lohan and the rest of the cast to try and pick up the pieces. Fox Home Entertainment's DVD features excellent audio and video, however, and a decent extras collection.

 

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