It wasn't really the smartest idea to release this movie against Spider-Man 3. It's pretty much career suicide if you ask me. Well in more ways than one, this movie is career suicide for a few of the actors and the director himself.
It's usually not a bad thing to see a director or an actor try something different for a change. Adam Sandler just did Reign Over Me and was incredible in that movie. Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) has stepped aside from directing bloddy, gritty films a couple times (Matchstick Men, A Good Year) and Matchstick Men was really good but I didn't really hear anything positive on A Good Year so I never saw it. Well anyways, director Curits Hanson's (8 Mile, LA Confidential) film before this was a "chick flick" (In Her Shoes) and I never saw it but I heard it wasn't a bad movie. And I don't really mind watching "chick flicks". I liked The Notebook and Love Actually and a few others. I usually like it when good directors do something different, but this is not a good example.
Eric Bana (Munich, Black Hawk Down) plays Huck Cheever, a professional poker player trying to qualify for the World Series of Poker for a chance to win 2.5 million so he can get out of debt. He meets Bille, played by Drew Barrymore, and they both fall in love but he can't figure out how to balance his poker life with his love life. He also has to put up with the dysfunctional relationship he has with his dad LC (Robert Duvall), who is a legend in the poker business.
The characters in this movie are all one dimensional. The chemistry between Huck and Billie is very dull. They talk and talk and talk but nothing really funny or interesting comes out of their mouths. It's usually a bad poker reference that is somehow tying into the love relationship or the line is just cheesy and it was pulled out of the book of overused cheesy lines that worked the first time they were used in a love story but by now don't work at all. The relationship between Huck and LC is underdeveloped and it tries to make us cry or make us feel emotional but neither of the characters have chemistry between them. Some of the humor is so awkward and lame. I don't see how anyone could really find some of the jokes in this movie funny. Or any of the jokes for that matter.
It's kind of sad to see two great acotrs like Eric Bana and Robert Duvall in some hokey love story like this. What's also weird is that Horatio Sanz (is he still on Saturday Night Live?) is in this move and I was hoping he would have a few funny parts but nope, he didn't.
Like I said before, this is career suicide for the actors and director. Eric Bana is a really good actor but it shows that he can't do well with love stories. Robert Duvall is a legend and he can play in any movie he wants to but at the same time, he needs to be careful in the roles he picks because this was not a good role for him. I've never really liked Drew Barrymore so I can't say much about her. Curtis Hanson, I think, is a great director and LA Confidential is one of the best movies I have ever seen. 8 Mile was good and to me, it showed that Eminem can go from being a horrible rapper to a decent actor. This film just doesn't really work though. It's not romantic nor is it funny. It tries to be a film about poker and a film about love but neither the poker part of the film nor the love part of the film has a pulse. The movie just goes and goes and goes and nothing really happens and it's so predictable how it will turn out.
Rating: 1 star (out of 4)
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