All too reminiscent of The Cincinnati Kid (1965), A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966), and California Split (1974), to name three far better films about gambling, Lucky You follows Huck Cheever (Bana) in his go-for-broke efforts to secure a spot in the ultra-lucrative 2003 World Series of Poker. Unlike his estranged father, two-time World Series of Poker champion L.C. (Robert Duvall), Huck hasn't quite mastered keeping a lid on his emotions at the poker table. Maintaining his poker face gets even more difficult after Huck meets Billie (Barrymore), a sweet, guileless young woman who just moved to Vegas from Bakersfield, California (thankfully, she's not a stock Vegas character, the hooker with a heart-of-gold). Although he initially sees her as just another easy mark, and basically treats her as such, Huck later realizes that he's truly in love with Billie. Now he just has to make peace with his father as they compete for big bucks in the World Series of Poker.

Hard to believe, but two Oscar winning screenwriters, Hanson (L.A. Confidential) and Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), wrote the clichéd, wafer-thin screenplay for Lucky You, which starts promisingly, with a sharply written scene introducing Huck schmoozing a wily pawnbroker, but the prologue's edgy vitality and comic brio doesn't carry over to the rest of the film. Worse still, the characters are so simply and obviously drawn that we never develop a rooting interest in any of them—least of all the film's ostensible hero Huck, whose festering resentment of his father plays out in tired, by-the-numbers fashion, i.e., "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." There's barely a sliver of nuance to Huck and L.C.'s conflicted father-son dynamic, which Hanson mostly explores through poker, both metaphorically (yawn) and literally (bigger yawn). In fact, so much of Lucky You transpires at the poker table, that unless you're a rabid fan, schooled in the rules of the game, these scenes will probably bore and confuse you.

Don't bet on Lucky You registering as anything more than a blip on the careers of Hanson, Bana (Munich), Barrymore and Duvall.