Just Your Luck, or Whiskey Down as it’s always known is a quirky comedy drama from 1996, with a surprising amount of star power attached.
The movie is set in and around an average every day Diner known as The New Sudka Cafe II, run by Nick (Jon Polito) with a healthy mix of customers partronising it. On this particular night Willie (Ernie Hudson) helping out behind the counter as the Chef, and Angela (Alanna Ubach) on waitress duty. And then we’ve got Kim (our Mrs Madsen), who is on a date with Ray (Sean Patrick Flanery) – The pair of them as sleazy yuppie movie lawyers that you can ever imagine with Straker (Jon Favreau) lurking in the background generally being sleazy.
One of the customers, a kindly old gentleman known as “Pops” (BIll Erwin) gets excitable when he realises he’s won BIG on the Lottery. As he gets to his feet to try and borrow a paper from Kim and Ray who are sat a nearby table to check his own is legitimate he suffers a heart attack and collapses.
It’s not long before Kim and the other people in the restaurant figure out what is going on and find themselves in a bit of a dilemma. Do they try and help Pops, or do they keep quiet just long enough to make sure Pops is no longer of the Earth and pocket the money themselves?
Before they can properly make up their minds about what to do the Diner starts getting other customers through the door, including a pair of cops (Mike Starr and Vince Vaughn) who frequent the place often while taking breaks from their shift.
They all try to act normal, but one thing leads to another. A pair of gangsters (Flea and John Lurie) come looking for Straker which further complicates things and… Well, things happen as they usually do in this kind of film, or there wouldn’t be a film.
It is nice to see Virginia doing something a bit different for a change, she’s about an inch away from doing her femme fatale thing but holds it back nicely (mostly). She does have a few good little moments in the film where she lets her guard down a little as well. She does her little bits of comedy well also, great timing and once again makes you wonder what she could have done with more.
It’s not a bad film, but it’s far from a great film. The sum of it’s parts certainly don’t live it up the whole anyways. Everyone puts in a good performance, it’s the whole setup that leaves it wanting for me. It doesn’t help that just having the one setting for the most part stifles the action somewhat and leaves you thinking it’s more of a play than anything else.
Availability:
I see this on VHS quite a lot under both “Just Your Luck” and “Whiskey Down”, they’re the US and UK titles respectively. There always seems to be a copy on sale. It’s never had a proper release on DVD and doesn’t seem to be available to stream anywhere, although Plex do have it listed.
Trailer:
#Nope
