Plot
Manhattanite Ashley is known to many as the luckiest woman around. After a chance encounter with a down-and-out young man, however, she realizes that she's swapped her fortune for his.

Release Year: 2006

Rating: 5.0/10 (20,204 voted)

Critic's Score: 29/100

Director: Donald Petrie

Stars: Lindsay Lohan, Chris Pine, Samaire Armstrong

Storyline
In Manhattan, Ashley Albright is a lucky woman and very successful in the agency where she works. The clumsy Jake Hardin is an unlucky aspirant manager of the rock band McFly, who is unsuccessfully trying to contact the entrepreneur Damon Phillips to promote his band. When Ashley meets Jake in a masquerade party, they kiss each other, swapping her fortune with his bad luck.

Writers: I. Marlene King, Amy Harris

Cast:
Lindsay Lohan - Ashley Albright
Chris Pine - Jake Hardin
Samaire Armstrong - Maggie
Bree Turner - Dana
Faizon Love - Damon Phillips
Missi Pyle - Peggy Braden
Makenzie Vega - Katy
Carlos Ponce - Antonio
Tom Fletcher - Himself - McFly Band Member
Danny Jones - Himself - McFly Band Member
Harry Judd - Himself - McFly Band Member
Dougie Poynter - Himself - McFly Band Member
Tovah Feldshuh - Madame Z
Jaqueline Fleming - Tiffany
Dane Rhodes - Mac

Taglines: Everything changed in the wink of an eye.

Official Website: 20th Century Fox [France] | 20th Century Fox [United States] |

Release Date: 12 May 2006

Filming Locations: Grand Central Station, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Box Office Details

Budget: $28,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend: $5,692,285 (USA) (14 May 2006) (2541 Screens)

Gross: $17,324,744 (USA) (30 July 2006)

Runtime: USA: 103 min

Trivia:
For filming the concert scenes in England, fans were told when booking the tickets that they could be in the filming for Just My Luck. This was so that they wouldn't bring any merchandise or banners, to coincide with the idea that McFly were an undiscovered band.

Goofs:
Continuity: When Ashley gets into the taxi in the beginning of the movie, after the rain luckily stops, it is still clearly raining.

Quotes:
[first lines]
Ashley Albright: Good morning, Oscar.

Not Deserving of the Overly Harsh Reviews

Rating: 10/10

I admit three things.

1) Not a Lindsay Lohan fan. The only other LL movie I liked was The Parent Trap. "Confessions...", "Freaky Friday", "Mean Girls", "Herby", etc. I didn't enjoy them at all (which was surprising because normally some of those flicks are my cup of tea).

2) Frist time I saw a preview for "Just My Luck" I wasn't very interested in seeing it.

3) The only real reason I wanted to see this movie is because I loved Chris Pine in Princess Diaries 2 and thought he was gipped on some much deserved screen time in that one so I wanted to see what else he had to offer - because honestly, that deleted scene from PD2 with him and Mia (Anne Hathaway) in the kitchen was faboo and never EVER should have been left on the cutting room floor. What's worse is that GM never said WHY they cut that scene.

That said, I ended up loving "Just My Luck." Call me crazy and say I have no taste. I don't care. I came for the hottie I stayed for the movie.

Was this an award winning movie? No and I doubt it was ever hoped to be by anyone who went in to make it.

Did it have flaws? Yes. (A few but a minor one that bugs me enough to mention but has no real factor on liking or disliking this movie is the freeze-frame at the end. Should have cut to black instead but that's just me. Freeze-frames are tricky things that should be used rarely and wisely.)

Does it deserve to be bashed and tagged as the "worst movie of 2006"? Definitely not. As about two other people have said, this was a cute, fun, escape-reality-for-90-minutes-to-an-hour kind of a movie with no pretenses to be anything other that what it was.

Okay, so I agree that there were moments when Lohan's acting could have been improved (the two that stick out in mind are when that blonde guy first joins her in the elevator and when she's looking at the broken mirror at the very end). But you can find bad acting in even the so called "best movies" of the year. Sometimes no matter what they do, some dialogue or scene comes off clunky. It happens. We move on.

Overall - considering my opinion on LL in general - I was pleasantly surprised by her in this movie. She's another Julia Roberts to me. I'm not a real fan but she's got a movie or two that I enjoy.

I thought Chris Pine was just adorable in that geeky, down on his luck optimist who (in his characters own words) "gave up years ago. That's my secret to happiness." He was tender and hopeful and just head over heals for a girl who before the ball would never given him a second glance.

I was surprised but glad that they didn't delve two much deeper into the workings of this "change of luck" thing. You knew the kiss was the key and as far as the actual workings of it all, that's all that mattered. The more important part is what happens to the two fortunate/unfortunate souls sucked in by this crazy bit of magic.

When the movie wound down to a close I thought of about a dozen different ways it could have ended. The one they chose is the one I love the best. Two people who would love to have good luck all the time - having experienced the worse first hand - but would rather the other be happy instead.

I loved the scene at the end when they both refused to keep the luck, trading it back and forth until no one knew who had the luck and who didn't. Ashley really grew to the point that she was willing to sacrifice that for someone else which in the end made her deserving of the great guy that Jake is.

And what better way to bring it all to a close then to give the luck to a little girl who is still young enough to be either corrupted into cynical thinking or learn the lesson that Jake and eventually Ashely did; Luck comes and goes. What you do with that luck helps define who you are.

Maybe I got a little to philosophical on a movie that I said was just a bit of fun. I don't care. I thought this movie was all kinds of wonderful. It's one that when the credits began to roll my first thought was "I'll totally buy it when it comes out on DVD". That's how I know I really liked a movie.

I see this movie as an underdog of sorts. And when it comes to movies I tend to prefer the underdog. When someone talks up a movie too much it tends to turn me off (It was only at the very last minute that I changed my mind and decided to watch both Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, two series that I had sworn off due to people raving too much for my tastes).

If that makes me a person with bad taste in movies, then so be it. I'll live happy in my ignorance.

I would definitely see this movie again. And again and again. As I said, I'll buy my copy of the DVD the day it's released.

I give this movie a ten because even though it wasn't perfect, I feel the need to offset some of the really unnecessarily bad reviews and scores it got from others.

AL

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