NOW IN THEATERS! As a kid, I was always enamored with the game show Press Your Luck. It seemed so random, with the strange and comical whammy character popping up at any time after a contestant would press the stop button in order to steal all of a player’s winnings. Players would hypnotically wish themselves luck as they kept their eyes on the screen by saying, “No whammies, no whammies, no!” I had never heard of the true story of someone cheating the game, so I was intrigued to find out how exactly this went down with the film based on it, The Luckiest Man in America, by writer/director Samir Oliveros and co-writer Maggie Briggs. How does one rig a game that appears as if it’s based on the luck of the draw?
The story, set in 1984, follows Paul Walter Hauser as contestant Michael Larsen, an unemployed ice cream truck driver from Ohio who has more than one secret. In the opening scene, he gives a big monologue about his life and love of the show until he’s caught lying to production about impersonating someone else in order to get on. Despite the fib, Bill Carruthers (David Strathairn), the show’s co-creator and head honcho, decides that Michael is charismatic enough to be on Press Your Luck. We next see Larsen at a thrift store getting himself a deal on a used jacket, then sewing buttons on it by hand in order to look spiffy for his big television appearance.
The cast of The Luckiest Man in America is filled with outstanding character actors such as Walter Goggins (who is having a pop culture spotlight moment with season 3 of White Lotus) as the slick game show host and Shamier Anderson as the casting director who is frantically tasked with finding out how Michael Larsen is gaming the system while his winnings skyrocket past all previous show records.
THE LUCKIEST MAN IN AMERICA – Still 2
“How does one rig a game that appears as if it’s based on the luck of the draw?”
We can see by Michael’s thrift store scene and the way that the show audience laughs about his job as an ice cream truck driver, that he hasn’t had the best luck in life up to this point. He speaks glowingly about his wife as the most beautiful woman in the world, and about his daughter, but we later learn that even his cherished home life is not what it seems to be.
The Luckiest Man in America has a stellar cast and fascinating true-life story to work with, but sadly, it never comes together to hit it out of the park like the ingredients suggest. Paul Walter Hauser is fantastic as Michael Larsen, but I wish that there was more buildup in the story to give his character the proper emotional resonance by the conclusion. It’s kind of like, “Well, that sucks for him,” instead of being wrecked by the irony of having so much “luck” in the game but not in life.
To me, the message is of The Luckiest Man in America that money isn’t everything. It’s a recurring theme in film, but yet so many people in the real world never get the memo. I enjoyed the buildup of trying to figure out how Larsen was winning the game, as well as this incredible cast shining in moments such as Goggins being flustered by unexpected drama unfolding on TV.
"…money isn’t everything."
