Lucky Break: Critic Reviews

A negligible British comedy.

Forced, familiar and thoroughly condescending.

It's what the Brits themselves might call fair to middling.

No worse a film than Breaking Out, and Breaking Out was utterly charming.

Mike Leigh mainstay Timothy Spall deftly shades in the designated goner, fellow Still Crazy alum Bill Nighy is sweetly wispy as the capable fop, and anger-management counselor Olivia Williams trembles pleasantly as usual.

The movie has a raffish charm and good-hearted characters, and like The Full Monty it makes good use of the desperation beneath the comedy.

The formulaic script, stocked with not one truly menacing inmate, echoes far too many sentimental post-Full Monty imports.

Suffers from over-familiarity since hit-hungry British filmmakers have strip-mined the Monty formula mercilessly since 1997.

While we can forgive Cattaneo for succumbing to temptation, we must also damn him and screenwriter Ronan Bennett (Face) for failing to attempt to improve on the original idea.

A pleasant effort that doesn't hit any of its targets.

Lucky Break is perfectly inoffensive and harmless, but it's also drab and inert.

An enjoyable, funny, well-performed comedy with an appealingly old-fashioned feel.

Lightly reflective and consistently entertaining, Lucky Break is an easy-to-take diversion.

Well, this is definitely a disappointment.

If you adored The Full Monty so resoundingly that you're dying to see the same old thing in a tired old setting, then this should keep you reasonably entertained.