Lucky Lady: A Review

LUCKY LADY

Sometimes, what looks good on paper does not end up good at all. Such is the case with Lucky Lady. It has some great music, including two relatively unknown Kander & Ebb songs written for their unofficial muse. Unfortunately, a nice soundtrack cannot carry a film that tries too hard to end up nowhere. 

Tijuana, 1930. Down on her luck American chanteuse Claire (Liza Minelli) sings for her supper in a rundown dive. Her late husband Harry, who owned the bar, was also a human smuggler. Now, Claire's lover Ellison Walker (Burt Reynolds) will do "one last job" of smuggling Mexicans across the border. As is the case with all "one last jobs", Walker's coyote run ends disastrously. Adding to his troubles is Kibby Womack (Gene Hackman). He was one of the men Walker was going to smuggle despite Kibby being American.

Kibby forces himself on Walker and Claire on their newest venture. They will smuggle rum to thirsty Americans despite Prohibition. That does mean getting the booze away from Christie McTeague (John Hillerman). The mobster is not amused. Neither is Coast Guard Captain Aaron Moseley (Geoffrey Lewis). Our trio is attempting to smuggle the booze via sea on the Lucky Lady. Captain Moseley is on to them. He won't be bribed and comes close to killing them. 

Eventually though, thanks to help from the sole Lucky Lady crewman, Billy Weber (Robby Benson), Claire, Walker and Kibby manage to outwit and outrun the Coast Guard. Claire now has two lovers and she ain't ashamed. Arriving in San Diego, the three are going for their curious living arrangements and live together. The past, however, is never far behind. McTeague is set on getting them for getting the better of him. Not everyone will survive to see happy days again.

Lucky Lady has exactly one positive: its soundtrack. The film is filled with Jazz Age standards like Bessie Smith's Hot Time in the Ole Town Tonight and Young Woman Blues. There's a rendition of All I Do is Dream of You, sung deliberately badly by a lounge singer at the hotel our trio is staying in. I do not know if including All I Do is Dream of You was an in-joke by director Stanley Donen. His most famous film is probably Singin' in the Rain, and All I Do is Dream of You is prominently featured in that film. We even get Burt Reynolds belting out a little of Ain't Misbehavin'. I suspect that after listening to Reynolds warbling the Fats Waller standard, one can guess why his musical At Long Last Love bombed so spectacularly.  

The film also features two new songs written by John Kander and Fred Ebb. Kander & Ebb found their muse in Liza Minnelli. Their two songs for her, Lucky Lady and (Get) While the Getting is Good, are good numbers. Minnelli and Kander & Ebb were almost always in top form whenever they collaborated. 

Unfortunately, that was the only good collaboration Lucky Lady saw. You had three strong actors in the leading roles. You had a celebrated director. What you did not have was a good script. It is unclear of the Gloria Katz and William Huyck screenplay was what ultimately appeared on screen. What did end up on screen was a very jumbled affair. It aimed to be zany and a bit of screwball. However, there was no sense of timing. Take for example a scene where Kibby is taunting Captain Moseley about escaping. The mad captain starts shooting at Kibby but keeps missing hitting him. Walker jumps off the lifeboat while a supposedly oblivious Kibby keeps mocking him. The comedy comes from how apparently Kibby is unaware that he is literally sinking. 

As played by Gene Hackman, it looks forced. It does look like Hackman is aware that it is meant to be funny. He just cannot play it as funny. The boat chase between McTeague and our bootleggers is also meant to be a bit funny, and even perhaps exciting. However, the overall result in Lucky Lady is that it is neither. 

I do not necessarily fault the actors. I think Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds and Gene Hackman did try. It might be a case of them trying too hard. One senses throughout Lucky Lady that the three of them were too smart for the material. It is as if they knew all this was idiotic and were waiting for their checks to deposit. Minnelli, I think, tried the hardest to sell the premise. She was fine when she was singing. She was not bad when she was acting. She just couldn't make the menage a trois believable because she did not have much chemistry with Hackman or Reynolds.

Burt Reynolds, I think, thought that he would be best served by going broad. He wasn't. It looked forced and unnatural. The same with Hackman. Again, they were all good actors. They did their best. They just could not make things zany. Worse is when Lucky Lady shifts into some surprisingly dark drama. How else to explain that this comedy has a violent end to an innocent? 

Not that some part of the viewer would feel for Billy. Robby Benson is a curious player here. He was totally blank as this kid. Part of me found it almost amusing that his soft voice was not heard unless absolutely necessary. It was as if the filmmakers figured it would be best to keep Benson's dialogue to a bare minimum. Lucky Lady was released before another film of his, Tribute. When comparing his performances in both, somehow Robby Benson got worse as an actor. Geoffrey Lewis was too cartoonish as Captain Moseley. I figure that the character was meant to be ridiculous. Lewis never made him plausibly ridiculous. 

Only John Hillerman managed to make his character of McTeague a genuine menace. However, I would say that Hillerman acted as if Lucky Lady were a neo-noir drama and not a zany screwball comedy. 

Lucky Lady aimed for screwball hijinks with a daring suggestion of a threesome. The pacing, however, was a bit off. Things were played a bit too broadly or seriously. The balance was off. It would be better to listen to the soundtrack than try to figure out exactly what Lucky Lady is about. Lucky Lady is neither. 

DECISION: D-