The Big Picture
- Nora Ephron’s film Lucky Numbers deviates from her signature rom-com style, lacking the tenderness and joy audiences have come to love.
- The characters of Russ and Crystal, played by John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow, are unlikable and outright villainous, making it difficult for viewers to root for them as a couple.
- The lack of chemistry between Russ and Crystal, along with the film’s indecisive tone, contribute to the overall mediocrity and lack of intrigue in Lucky Numbers.
There are few filmmakers as readily and effortlessly associated with the rom-com genre as Nora Ephron. With warm and fuzzy rom-coms like When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle, Ephron defined the quintessential charm of 90s romance. So, it came as a surprise to see the auteur filmmaker directing the dark comedy, Lucky Numbers in 2000, a movie which was so devoid of the signature Ephron tenderness and joy that you just couldn’t trace any of her signature essence in it. Unlike Ephron’s previous works where you couldn’t help but root for two individuals to get together, here, you are, at best, apathetic to the romance of the couple, and at worst, annoyed every time they share the screen together.
What Is ‘Lucky Numbers’ About?
In the movie, John Travolta plays Russ Richards, a slimy weather forecaster who’s a small-time celeb in the small town of Harrisburg. He doesn’t drink or do drugs and always has a pleasant smile and something nice to say. He’s the sort of guy who would clap after the airplane lands. But after his snowmobile business starts to suffer due to extensive warm months, he hatches a plot to rig the state lottery and cash in $6 million. To this end, he enlists the help of the local lotto girl, Crystal (Lisa Kudrow), who is easily corruptible and more than happy to share in on the win. Their ingenious plan to rig the preselected lottery balls works wonderfully well, but the news of this scam quickly starts spreading around. And before the duping duo know it, there is a thug, a strip club owner, and their own boss at the TV station looking to get a piece of the action.
Lisa Kudrow and John Travolta’s Characters in ‘Lucky Numbers’ Are Utterly Unlikeable
Before we even approach the issue of why Russ and Crystal don’t work as a couple, we run into the problem of likability, in that neither of them are very likable characters. Though Russ projects a sunny exterior with his smarmy attitude towards everyone he meets, his veneer soon starts melting underneath it, and we start seeing his ugly side as he resorts to desperate and morally questionable means to get what he wants. As Crystal, Kudrow appears to have mistakenly brought in her Phoebe persona from Friends, and though it feels like a quirky eccentricity at first, it quickly wears you down. And it certainly doesn’t help her case once we see her sociopathic side as she murders her asthmatic cousin by bouncing up and down his chest.
The problem isn’t really that they are flawed. Ephron famously used flawed characters in her previous projects to provide a means of relatability for the audience. Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) in You’ve Got Mail was a soulless capitalist who reduced books to mere commodities to be pushed down the consumer’s throat with discounts and coupons. Still, he had his redeeming qualities that made the viewers root for him to end up with Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) at the end of You’ve Got Mail. But the problem with Lucky Numbers’ characters is that they aren’t only unrelatable, but they are outright villainous — and their flaws, unlike the cute and charming imperfections of Ephron’s previous protagonists, aren’t relatable to anyone who isn’t a selfish, inconsiderate sociopath.
Unlike Other Nora Ephron Characters, Russ and Crystal Have No Chemistry
Making two unlikable characters into a lovable couple is an excruciatingly difficult task, but if the movie plays its cards right, two flawed characters, when together, can bring about a fascinating dynamic that cancels out their individual unappealing traits. Unfortunately for Lucky Numbers, though, it isn’t one of those movies. Russ and Crystal’s relationship oozes as much warmth as a day old forgotten cup of coffee, and their chemistry is as dead as the aforementioned asthmatic cousin. Their conversations and banter always have a selfish ulterior motive to them, and never once do we ever hear them talking about anything apart from money and their botched plan.
It’s implied that they have good sexual chemistry, but we never witness it, and whatever relationship they have seems to begin and end with the feeling of lust. For the better part, they are mostly bickering, but not in the young 25 year-old-manner that’s cute and charming, but rather with the staleness of a couple who’ve been trapped in a loveless marriage for 25 years. After a certain point, you start getting annoyed by the same repeated squabbles and just pray you don’t ever end up third wheeling with a couple like this one.
Russ and Crystal Suffer From ‘Lucky Numbers’ Inability To Commit
With Lucky Numbers, it feels like Ephron was attempting to recreate the twisted charm of Fargo and Pulp Fiction, but it’s not successful, because unlike the mentioned movies, Lucky Numbers never quite manages to incite intrigue through its characters, dialogues, scenes, or any other element of the movie. The movie is riddled with clichés about smarmy weathermen and daffy lotto girls, and there is no point where the viewer feels challenged about their expectations or gets even a whiff of novelty. Travolta and Kudrow’s on-screen dynamic is engulfed by many such morsels of mediocrity, and even in itself, there is nothing that ignites even the tiniest spark of interest in their relationship.
Another major downfall of the movie is that Lucky Numbers seems to be indecisive about the tone it wants to establish and carry forward. For a movie categorized as dark comedy, there isn’t enough darkness nor comedy to justify its genre. And that’s a perilous spot to be in since it is the tone of the movie that informs the consistent manner in which dialogues and actions play out, and how the characters interact with one another. And under this confusion about the tone, Travolta and Kudrow’s chemistry comes off as contrived, rather than something that emerges organically. They keep changing hats from friends with benefits with no feelings attached to clumsy bickering con-artists who can’t seem to agree on anything. And at the end of it all, the viewer is just left asking, “What was the point of any of this?”
Just as the characters take a gamble deviating from what they’re normally good at, so too does Ephron take a gamble deviating from her cozy romances with charming couples. In the end, though, the odds were against her, and she ended up creating the worst couple in her body of work with Lucky Numbers.
