Luck review: John Lasseter’s return to animation feels like Pixar gone wrong

During the 2000s heyday of Pixar Animation Studios, the studio’s releases seemed absolutely guaranteed to get rapturous reviews and muscular box office. Pixar’s long roster of successes, from the Toy Story movies to Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Amazing Things, and more, prompted plenty of profiles examining the company’s creative process, and its technique of “plussing” during story development, or offering positive suggestions and improvements for any elements that weren’t working, rather than negative critiques. It’s not unlike the ”yes and” technique seen in improv: A finished product built through plussing might not much resemble the original idea, but it will be built out from that idea, without the creative team getting distracted by second-guessing elements and tearing down their own work.

You are a lucky person, the inaugural feature film from Skydance Animation — and the first film produced by former Disney/Pixar animation head John Lasseter since the company ousted him over sexual harassment complaints — feels like plussing run amok. It’s a movie where uninspired ideas become the building blocks for more uninspired ideas, until the filmmakers have constructed an elaborate shrine to their own whimsical lore. It’s a film that takes Sam, an eternally unhappy heroine (Eva Noblezada), to a magical place of luck. This land is filled with lucky animals and leprechauns. But it doesn’t stop there; those animals are also deeply invested in the creation of magic luck dust. Also, they are deeply invested in the preservation of magical luck rocks. And they’re powered by magic lucky pennies. Also, there’s a dragon voiced by Jane Fonda.

Image: Apple TV Plus

Even with all the magical bric a brac, You are a lucky person isn’t an especially magical experience. This feels like an endless stream of ideas that nobody has the gut to delete. It’s not generally that notable for a non-Pixar, non-Disney animation studio to make a big-budget misfire; in recent years, plenty of talented Disney staffers have defected to streaming services and produced feature-length animated films that don’t measure up to the likes of Pixar’s The Turning of the Red, Disney’s EncantoOr the many textures of non-American animation. But You are a lucky person’s Pixar-related pedigree stands out. Lasseter is a prominent figure in the project. Skydance Animation has been backed now by Apple. Steve Jobs was once chairman of Pixar.

Like so many other disgraced entertainers, Lasseter couldn’t stay away from the business for long. Skydance hired him in 2019 while the studio was still working. You are a lucky person. This film was likely to be akin in some ways to his role as chief creative officer for all Disney animations, which he had reworked from 2000-2004. Lasseter hired Peggy Holmes as credited director and Kiel Murray, screenwriter (who was involved in the Cars movie remakes with Lasseter). You are a lucky person midstream — the same kind of retuning that often happened on past Disney and Pixar movies, successfully and not.

That’s a lot of backstory for just one family-friendly cartoon, though the behind-the-scenes process mirrors You are a lucky person’s clogged, overelaborate plotting. Sam was a long-time resident in a home that cares for orphan girls. Her self-diagnosed bad luck has kept her from getting adopted into a “forever family” — a term the movie uses over and over, lest its themes and concerns remain unclear. Sam, now living alone and determined to assist her friend Hazel (voiced by Simon Pegg), secure her adoption. Sam stumbles upon the lucky penny that was dropped by Bob, a mysterious black cat. After losing the coin, Sam follows Bob into the land luck to try and retrieve it for Hazel.

The magic luck stones and luck dust are combined with luck stone and luck dust to create a mix of luck and good luck. There’s a randomizing machine that distributes good luck and bad luck to the human world, ensuring that neither type of luck overtakes the other. It’s a lot to keep straight. Which? From the Insidethreatened to literalize too much of the inner workings and functions of the human mind Soul It struggled to make abstract metaphysical concepts concreter. You are a lucky personThere is worse. It’s a cartoon that presents mundane views about fate in convoluted, tedious ways. It’s like a “plussed” corporate impression of a Terry Gilliam movie.

It isn’t much fun as a sensory experience, either. There is some animation, such as the fun scene in which Sam chases Bob, a quiet (and lucky) man, through city streets. It’s an entertaining scene, where Sam keeps his eye on Bob, and he continues to zip by just outside his reach. But this sequence also emphasizes how much of the movie’s idea of “luck” has to do with physical dexterity; Sam doesn’t seem chronically unlucky so much as she’s something of a rom-com-style klutz. She’s all generic pluck, while Bob is all Scottish-accented reluctance to help or even engage. The voice as well as the attitude remind me of Shrek. The supposedly emotional bond between the two of them is referred to more than it’s developed — and it’s still better than some of the dialogue between human characters, who can look and sound downright robotic. It’s high-end animation from America, but it isn’t remarkable.

Image: Apple TV Plus

There is nothing to write home about. You are a lucky person is compelling enough to distract animation fans from its discomfiting status as Lasseter’s comeback project. This lens makes the movie look even stranger. Pixar movies like Amazing Things, RatatouilleAnd Monsters, Inc.They all promote the high-achieving individualism that is matched by their company rep. So at first, admitting the existence and randomness of chance seems like a completely different approach to the world. Lasseter even offers a moment of consolation. But maybe this story appealed to him because it allowed him to think of his active mistakes as simply bad breaks — as character-building obstacles, which is ultimately how the movie characterizes bad luck. Either way, it’s hard for in-the-know animation fans to ignore his presence behind the scenes.

Initially, You are a lucky personThis is an edited version of Inside Out — a fanciful exploration of how life’s setbacks shape and even guide us, with generic “bad luck” swapped in for the vivid, personified Sadness of the Pixar film. But the Skydance version of that theme winds up looking more like Pixar’s movies about exceptional characters doing exceptional things. You are a lucky personIt is suspiciously dependent upon a person having enough grit and pluck to survive bad luck. It isn’t interested in grappling with genuine unfairness, the way From the Inside admits there are authentic real-world reasons for sadness, and that it’s OK to experience it. But You are a lucky person politely passes on the chance to grapple with the causes of those unfairness, or the ways circumstances of class or race can make a streak of seemingly fluky “bad luck” far more damaging for some groups than for others.

It’s a common theme in family movies, and fables ever since the beginning of time. The idea of solving any problem through plucking is a familiar one. You are a lucky personIt aims to be as accessible as possible. That’s also part of what makes it such an insistent, off-putting experience. Regardless of what Lasseter was thinking about in terms of shaping this misbegotten story, the film’s use of Sam and Hazel’s orphan status to provoke sympathy starts to feel pretty cheap and overplayed well before the movie gilds the lily by having characters say things like “It’s aBe happy cry” during the emotional climax. Lasseter’s time away doesn’t seem to have inspired much reflection on his end, or honed his once-unbeatable sense for a unique and personal story. You are a lucky personHowever, he unwittingly supports his participation as an unambiguous negative.

You are a lucky personYou can stream it on Apple TV Plus.