Luck is a new Apple TV+ animated film from John Lasseter. It’s about an orphan girl who turns 18 and is moved out of the group home she’s been stuck in all her life. Feeling unmoored, she finds and loses a lucky penny. With the help of a lucky cat, she’s brought into the fantastical world of Luck in order to find another lucky penny.

I was really rooting for this one. I loved how it opened, I liked the main character and her relationship with a fellow orphan girl. I loved the physical comedy of her bad – and good – luck. And then the actual plot kicks in and it slowly falls apart.

I just didn’t jibe with the supernatural Luck world. It was a little imaginative in its art direction but took the easy path with its characters. We get lucky rabbits, generic leprechauns right off a cereal box, luck dragons, lucky grasshoppers, and even a lucky Scottish black cat since, apparently, black cats are lucky in Scotland (nice tidbit). And lucky ladybugs which, by some wild coincidence, are also a plot point in Bullet Train which opened today as well. Weird.

I found the land of Luck to be too abstract. It seems so random and odd… I’m not sure if this land is part of any culture’s folklore or if this just a bunch of random shit the writers thought up. But it wasn’t working for me and I grew very bored of the rather humdrum, routine animated kids flick messaging and adventures.

But everything in the real world – the main character and her cute relationship with the younger orphan, her trying to live her life on her own, getting a job, and other things were very adorable and funny. And that’s the movie I wanted to watch. But, just like with Luca, these animation studios can’t just make a straight story. They have to add magical creatures and sea monsters or the kids will get bored.

There’s some decent in this flick and kids will probably love it. I’m sure this just didn’t working for me because I’m a curmudgeonly old stick-in-the-mud grumpus. But kids movies can be written with adults in mind… ask Turning Red. Hell, even ask the imperfect Lightyear.

Score: 66