You’d think we make our own luck – but not according to a new cartoon in which our fortune is governed by secret opposing worlds.

Things we never thought we’d see in the movies: a children’s big-budget cartoon partly set in a sewage treatment facility, a dragon with the hots for an overweight unicorn, and John Ratzenberger cast as a root vegetable. All this and more can be found in the introductory feature from Skydance Animation, the new toon outfit headed by Pixar’s John Lasseter. It’s a daring, if odd, choice, but no more ground-breaking than this year’s Pixar release Turning Red or as confusing (and challenging) as Pixar’s Inside Out. So, Pixar has obviously become the standard by which we now measure all major animated releases, much like Disney was once the byword for the genre (and who currently own Pixar).

Luck, now streaming on Apple+, begins promisingly as both a delightful and inventive story of an orphaned girl, Sam, who has been plagued by bad luck all of her life. Now she is eighteen and, still without a “forever family”, is released into the real world where she is provided with a modest basement flat and a menial job. Wanting to make a good impression on her first day at work, Sam finds that, as usual, everything is pitted against her. Having accidentally locked herself in the bathroom, her breakfast routine turns into a disaster until she finds that her bicycle has a flat tyre – and her pump falls apart in her hands. But Sam is a resourceful and eternally optimistic soul and, against the odds, she makes into work on time, before everything goes Pete Tong there as well. Afterwards, having failed to find a free table at a nearby restaurant, she sits on the kerb and shares her meagre sandwich with a passing black cat. Then, after the cat runs off, she finds a penny on the sidewalk. “Find a penny,” she muses to herself, “pick it up…”

The emotional arc of the story is visible a mile off but how it gets there is genuinely unforeseen. Drawing on parallel worlds explored in the likes of Monsters, Inc., Inside Out and Soul, the film whisks Sam into an alternative universe called the Land of Luck. Here, anything goes, as Sam sets off to find her lucky penny which she lost down the loo (it could happen to anybody…). However, being human, Sam is a trespasser in this alternate reality where good fortune is manufactured for the world above. So she disguises herself as a Leprechaun, albeit a very big one. The thing with parallel worlds is that filmmakers can run with the ball and out of the park, and as the plot here becomes more outrageous and convoluted, so Luck loses its sense and, along with it, its charm.

To compensate, there are lively turns from Simon Pegg as the black cat (with a Scottish accent), Jane Fonda as a dragon (who oversees the Good Luck Corp.) and John Ratzenberger as the root who runs his own bar (we’re all but spared the theme tune from Cheers). Along the way we learn that misfortune has its place in the world and the homilies start to pile up like a heap of ill-fated lottery tickets. If the message is simple, it could not be relayed in a more tortuous way, which will baffle most children, if not their guardians. You see, we all need bad luck sometimes, and it’s processed in a Hadron Collider beneath our feet. Sort of.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Voices of Eva Noblezada, Simon Pegg, Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Flula Borg, Lil Rel Howery, Colin O'Donoghue, John Ratzenberger, Grey DeLisle, Kwaku Fortune, Adelynn Spoon.

Dir Peggy Holmes, Pro John Lasseter, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and David Eisenmann, Screenplay Kiel Murray, Pro Des Fred Warter, Ed William J. Caparella, Music John Debney, Sound Josh Gold and Pete Horner.

Apple Original Films/Skydance Animation-Apple TV+.
105 mins. USA/Spain. 2022. UK and US Rel: 5 August 2022. Cert. PG.

Luck

Luca

Lucky