Director Donald Petrie has done it again, said Craig D. Lindsey in the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer. He's made a romantic comedy even more terrible than his pathetic Kate Hudson vehicle, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. This time his star is Lindsay Lohan, who is using this film to graduate from teen roles to ostensibly more grown-up ones. So here she is as Ashley, a New York beauty with an awesome job as a party planner and the ability to turn the weather from rainy to sunny when she walks outside. But her fortunes change at a masquerade ball, where she swaps spit with the eternally unlucky Jake (Chris Pine). Thus begins 'œa cloying, unsurprising, nauseatingly awful film that's unfunny to the point of being almost unique.' The slapstick gags are painfully dumb, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Oops! Ashley slipped in mud! Oh no! You're not supposed to fill the washing machine with that much soap! God forbid that this movie should contain 'œan actual joke or situation that is in any way charming or surprising.' Just My Luck is a casualty of focus-group thinking, said Robert Philpot in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The predictable plot underestimates even the intelligence of its target tween audience. 'œAshley and Jake's destiny is so obvious that practically everything between the opening and closing credits feels like padding.'
Rating: PG-13
