Don’t Say Good Luck is the latest attempt by Happy Madison Productions to branch out from the wacky, gross-out comedies made famous by its founder Adam Sandler and instead tell a more serious and grounded emotional story. It’s also a clear and noble attempt to diversify the audience compared to its typical output, especially given that our lead is not Mr. Sandler himself or any of his immediate comedy colleagues, but rather his daughter Sunny Sandler who has slowly but surely built up an acting career of her own, even if it is largely in films produced by and/or starring her father.
The point is that Don’t Say Good Luck is clearly trying to do something different, but ultimately just ends up falling into a different set of overused tropes. Everyone in it is doing a good job, there’s clear potential in this story, and the final product isn’t even really bad all things considered. It just constantly feels like there’s something missing, though it definitely has its moments.
What is Don’t Say Good Luck about?
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Our story centers on high schooler Sophie Birenbaum, played by Sunny Sandler, who’s ready to take her long-awaited spotlight in her school’s production of the musical Waitress. But things take a turn when, right after Sophie gets the lead role in the show, her mother, played by Melanie Lynskey, comes home with heartbreaking news: her previously defeated cancer has returned. Now, Sophie must balance preparing for the show and navigating high school relationships of all kinds with being there for her mother for as long as she can be.
Don’t Say Good Luck Review
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The biggest problem with Don’t Say Good Luck is that it’s simultaneously too self-serious to commit to its humor and just ever-so-slightly too goofy to fully commit to its emotional weight. For instance, incredible comedic talents like Jon Lovitz, Steve Buscemi, and Stephanie Beatriz show up in supporting roles, but none of them are ever given material that either lets us see how funny they’ve been in other works or stretch their acting muscles in terms of drama. Even when the film is actively trying to be funny, most bits never pay off in a satisfying way.
Meanwhile, so much of the drama is built on concepts seen a million times before in other, better coming-of-age films and family dramas. The failed crush, the familial in-fighting, the mixed-up schedules, and none of these tropes are given any sort of unique flair despite the cast giving it their best effort. None of this is helped by the film’s bizarre pacing that makes the film feel like it goes on far longer than the 100-minute runtime in spite of the fact that pivotal plot and character developments sometimes happen in montage or even completely offscreen.
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However, none of this means Don’t Say Good Luck is without merit. For one, as a veteran theater kid, I can say with authority that director Julia Hart nails the atmosphere of a high school theater production in a way that many other films covering the subject don’t. The silly yet genuinely useful warm-ups, the highly specified cast rituals, the way your castmates can be both incredibly petty but also the truest friends you’ll ever have, it’s all here and it feels very authentic and even kind of nostalgic.
But what truly saves the movie are Sunny Sandler and Melanie Lynskey as Sophie and her mother Elizabeth respectively. The cute bonding moments they have as mother and daughter feel very real, and the pain they feel during the emotional moments is incredibly palpable. For as trite as most of the drama is, when those two need to sell the heartbreak, they sell it so well that you wonder why the rest of the movie couldn’t be this good.
Is Don’t Say Good Luck worth watching?
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Don’t Say Good Luck will not be anything you haven’t seen before and its pacing issues will only make that fact more apparent. But the cast is solid, the two elements that most need to work, the theater stuff and the mother/daughter dynamic, definitely work, and it at least has its heart in the right place even if said heart isn’t doing anything new. There are certainly better things you could spend your time watching on Netflix, but you could also do a whole lot worse than this.
Don’t Say Good Luck premieres on Netflix August 14.
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