Aug 4, 2022

'Luck' Review Round-Up: Skydance Animation's First Feature Dismissed by Critics' Fortunes

To say that the road to release day has been rocky for the Luck team would be an understatement, but finally Apple+'s first animated feature with Skydance Animation will hit the platform on Friday.

Directed by Peggy Holmes ("The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning," "Secret of Wings") and written by Keir Murray, Jonathan Ivell, and Glen Berger, the film is a feature-length animated film about a young girl who is a little girl who is a little girl. Lack's voice cast includes Broadway star Eva Noblezada as Sam and Simon Pegg as Bob the Lucky Scottish Black Cat. The cast also includes Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Colin O'Donohue, Lil Rel Howery, Fra Borg, John Ratzenberger, and Adeline Spoon.

Critical response shares several themes. One is that it is difficult to cast an animated black cat without comparing it to Gigi in The Witch's Delivery Service. Another is that the plot is too long and convoluted. Especially since John Lasseter, longtime creative chief at Pixar and Disney, is now at the helm at Skydance Animation.

The film has received 47% on Rotten Tomatoes and 50 on Metacritic in anticipation of its release. Critics have commented:

Carlos Aguilar has a fairly favorable review in The Wrap:

"Rack" does not reach the level of sophistication of Pixar's best work, but it sets a new standard for Hollywood animation: trashy pop It is far more accomplished, both from a technical standpoint and in terms of story resonance, than the talking animal cash trucks infested with culture references.

The Telegraph's chief critic, Robbie Collins, says the film hits on an important point:

Directed by the sparkling Peggy Holmes, a Lasseter protégé who worked on two Tinker Bell direct-to-video films, "Luck" has a warmth to it that Pixar's own recent " Lightyear" contains all the warmth and originality not found in his older studio vintage films, with the same attitude (if not always the best clarity and craftsmanship).

Paste's Amy Amatangelo, however, was less impressed:

The plot of "Luck" is too dense and complex. The film's target audience probably lacks patience. Perhaps they will be distracted by sparkling crystals and funny unicorns. But at 106 minutes, the film's length and intricate plot will probably bore most children a bit. (In my unscientific survey of two children, the film lost them in the middle.)

Slashfilm's Hoai-Tran Bui compared the film to Ghibli and Pixar projects and was not impressed:

"Luck" might be a good time if it were not so obviously reminiscent of other excellent films. But aside from the truly stunning visuals (especially the "Lucky Country" design, which is a beautiful piece of retro-futurism with a fantasy twist), "Luck" can't help but feel like a Ghibli film processed in Pixar's formula. There's Ghibli's gentle whimsy and imaginative worldview, and there's Pixar's tendency to cleverly turn high-concept ideas into banal bureaucratic structures. The story, and even some of the imagery, is inspired by Hiroyuki Morita's 2002 fantasy film "The Cat's Back". Interestingly, Pixar has taken elements from Ghibli films before (Lasseter is a known fan of the Japanese animation studio). The influence of "Spirited Away" in "Coco" and the ecstatic flight scenes in "Toy Story" are just a few examples.

Indiewire's David Ehrlich also feels that "Luck" falls short in comparison to Ghibli and Pixar.

The magical world of "Luck" lacks the everyday creativity that allowed "Monsters, Inc." to tickle the imagination, the narrative integrity that allowed "Inside Out" to conflate character and emotion, the real place that exists outside the view of the public bathhouse in "Spirited Away The film has none of the mystery that makes it seem as if it were a real place that exists out of sight. The film's script, by Jonathan Isbell, Glen Berger, and Keir Murray, is a parade of half-relevant stimuli, not arranged as a narrative. There's a rabbit in a hazmat suit, a dragon voiced by Jane Fonda, and now Sam has to pretend to be Latvian (don't ask). That building looks like it was copy-pasted from Asgard, and those two are connected by a high-speed bumper car, all made of plastic.