Lucky (**)

Only 2 critics had anything negative to say about LUCKY according to calculations at rottentomatoes.com. That's pretty astounding regard for a movie that I found to be perfectly vapid. John Caroll Lynch's directorial debut promised to be a swan song for Harry Dean Stanton, the regarded character actor who died earlier this year at the age of 91. How disappointed I was to leave the theater with such utter disregard.

The film follows a man named Lucky, a nonagenarian who wakes up to perform yoga, drinks a glass of milk, then wanders to the local diner to drink coffee and work on a crossword. After he comes home from an exhausting day, he watches gameshows and then drifts to bed. Fascinating. The next morning, what do you know? He does his yoga and drinks a glass of milk. Oh, I forgot, in the evenings he wanders to the local watering hole to have a bloody mary and enjoy conversations of folks with personalities as dry as the desert in which the story is set.

Not a whole lot happens in the film, which isn't too surprising considering how the film is setup. There is no drama, no action, no violence and barely any language (Lucky inexplicably yells "cunt!" several times at an unseen object that is later revealed in a confusing and odd reveal). I have seen many films that might be classified as "boring," but oftentimes those films are filled with beautiful words, remarkable scenes, and great actors in peak form. This is not one of those films.

Stanton made his mark in a great film called "Paris, Texas," another quiet movie in which a man wanders the desert. That film had style, heartbreak, and an astounding climactic monologue. I feel as though this story worked to echo such a story and yet hit nearly every mark on the way. This story isn't assembled with remarkable craft or an ear for dialogue. The camera work is unsteady and the assembly feels rough. Stanton, once a great actor, gives a fine performance despite the visible toll of old age. The rest of the cast has no such excuse. From David Lynch (who delivers not one but two bizarre monologues about a rogue tortoise (or was it a turtle?) to Tom Skerritt, every line delivered feels forced. The movie feels less like a major production and more like a student film that would have received a "C" grade with the following note from the professor: "there's something here, but I'm not sure what."

I realize how inexplicable it is to lambast such a critically-acclaimed film. It's so obvious after viewing the film that there's nothing to it. It's a vapid exercise that results in something that is more of a chore to sit through. The final film of Harry Dean Stanton definitely serves to be something emotional, but LUCKY as a whole is a remarkably flat thing that is not a movie I would expect to revisit any time soon.