Luck review: ‘you will need the tenacity of a TV cold case detective’ | Films | Entertainment

There’s a great wordless sequence that begins with a mop falling against a door knob and ends with the girl’s breakfast slowly sliding down a wall. With great comic timing, a slice of toast plops onto the floor. Jam side down.

Sam’s luck changes dramatically when she offers a black cat a piece of a sandwich. When the mysterious feline scarpers, she finds a shiny coin and, after picking it up, is suddenly blessed with good fortune.

But after losing it, Sam seeks out the cat, whom she discovers can talk and has a ropey Scottish accent.

Sadly, the grumpy feline (Simon Pegg) is in no mood to offer her a replacement.

When she follows the cat through a magical portal, the charm quickly evaporates. On the other side is the Land of Luck, a magical realm that operates under a wildly
over-thought system of rules.

A good portion of the rest of the film is devoted to explaining them.

Apparently, lucky ideas are hatched by pigs, turned into ‘lucky dust’, stamped onto leaves, turned into crystals, and sent to a machine called the Randomizer.

There is also some business involving ‘ancient luck stones’, an R&D department, the Polishing Room, rabbits with joysticks, ‘The Inbetween’ and the Land of Bad Luck where gravity operates in reverse.

Jane Fonda voices a dragon CEO, Whoopi Goldberg is some sort of supervisor, Cliff from Cheers is a root vegetable barman.

Thankfully, Luck is available for home streaming where you can rewind it to your brain’s content.

I also recommend a pen and paper. A spare wall, drawing pins and a variety of coloured string would be even better.

To follow this, you will need the tenacity of a TV cold case detective.

• Luck, Certified PG, In Cinemas and on Apple TV+ now