REVIEWED - JUST MY LUCK: 'and introducing McFly." There are three words you don't want to see among the credits of any romantic comedy, writes Donald Clarke
As I recall, the English pop group and I have already been introduced and, realising quickly our relationship could not go anywhere, have parted on amicable terms.
Anyway, here they are providing the musical interludes in the first attempt to launch Lindsay Lohan at an audience old enough to drink (or, at least, drive). Their roles are not significant - they quip cheekily like a Monkees composed entirely of Davy Joneses. But the McFly ethos seems perfectly suited to the half-thing that is Just My Luck. Just as the boys produce music that feels superficially like rock but is really just nursery rhymes with guitars, Donald Petrie, director of Miss Congeniality, has delivered a comedy about independent working girls in Manhattan that fails hopelessly to escape the high-school cafeteria.
As we begin, Lohan, supernaturally fortunate in love and work, is hanging out with the cool kids: the Heathers, if you will. Having bumbled her way successfully through a presentation to a music executive, she has been thrust into a prominent position at a major PR firm.
At a masquerade ball, organised to promote her new client's roster, she kisses one of the less cool kids (Chris Pine) - a nerd while still wearing his glasses and combat jacket - and magically finds her good luck exchanged for a propensity to get sacked, stood-up, arrested and rained upon. Meanwhile, the young man, McFly's hitherto hapless manager, finds doors that were previously shut bursting open before him.
The supernatural premise is too vaguely defined to accommodate any dramatic tension and the gags rely somewhat too heavily on us being amused by awful things happening to pretty girls. But, sad to relate, the most disappointing thing about Just My Luck is the central performance.
Lohan, who, with her stick-thin body and wild hair extensions, now looks for all the world like a mop, has not yet broken away from the winks and sulks that characterised her excellent juvenile performances. It's like watching somebody pretend to be grown up. It's like watching McFly.
