Despite the history between Troma and myself, I decided, for one reason or another, to give them another chance. The hope is that for every Monsturd or Tales from the Crapper out there, there is a Toxic Avenger or Nukem High. Thankfully this rule is holding true so far.
“Getting Lucky” is about a nerdy kid in high school named Bill. Bill is in love with a girl, Krissi, and has been since elementary school. The problem is that Bill, as mentioned before, is a nerd and Krissi is a cheerleader. You know, the eternal struggle in high school. Since Krissi seems to have her eyes set on the biggest jock in school, Tony, bill figures he doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting her. That is until he stumbles upon a leprechaun in a beer bottle. Yup… why break stereo-types when you can make them work for you. Anyway, his new found friend is imprisoned in the bottle because… wait for it… he was a drunk. He now has to grant three wishes in order to break the curse placed upon him. And so our movie ride off into the sunset on a path that could only have been written by a thirteen year old boy, or a writer for Troma.
All the Troma bashing aside, this movie isn’t as bad as I was expecting. As I said before, I have seen the dregs of what Troma has to offer and this one is surprisingly well put together, considering. Getting Lucky was made in 1990 and probably well ahead of Lloyd Kaufman’s attempt to get everyone to “Make your own damn movie”. As such he was probably still looking at people that actually knew, for the most part, how to make movies.
I was actually surprised to see that the “special effects” were toned down for this movie. Meaning there weren’t buckets of fake blood, no strange rubber appendages, and use of poorly crafted miniatures. It really is an attempt at a campy love story. I commend who ever was in charge for never going over the top with really any facet of the movie. Hell, even the boobs were only used in places where they should have been.
I could probably go on forever about where this movies story begs, or down right DEMANDS willful suspension of disbelief, but I guess I will have to let it go. I can’t honestly believe that I am saying this, but as far as bad movies go, I have seen far, FAR worse than Getting Lucky. Sure it had a lot of really dumb writing, and even dumber set up for scenes. For instance the end of the movie *spoilers* when Bill has to fight Troy, and does so with shish kabobs. But in the context of the rest of the movie, I guess it’s forgivable.
No wonder this was a part of USA’s “Up All Night” line-up. Honestly, it could have been right after “I was a Teenaged Sex-alien”. Why not. I don’t even think there was a fart joke made. That is amazing in it’s own right. If you can find this movie, or have made the effort to do so, you might as well watch it. That’s probably the best thing I can say about Getting Lucky.
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