Sorry, this movie sucks

Crappy film

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Katlin Palmerston (Elisha Cuthbert) is a math-whiz high school student from a middle class home. She starts gambling to save up for an European trip with best friend Cheryl. She takes money from the girls at poker and the boys with football. She even sets up her own betting pool. With a run of bad luck and bad bets, she is in deep trouble. Popular girl Janice's sketchy brother Ron Lunderman sets up a poker game. Katlin wins big and starts dating Ron. The computer gambling continues and everything spirals out of control. She borrows from the wrong couple and they have a creepy way to settle the debt. Her mother (Sherry Miller) rides to the rescue.This is very much a lesson-filled movie of the week. It's basic and overtly dramatic. There is an inevitability to the plot. Elisha Cuthbert is what shines in this movie. She shows her beauty and her charisma. She's also young enough and pretty close to the 17 year old character. It helps to make it more real and visceral. The last act is quite creepy and unforgettable. It would help to have more original twists but this is strictly a "very special episode" of whatever teen soap.

This 2001 Canadian made-for-TV movie has been airing on the Lifetime Movie Network under the title "My Daughter's Secret Life," leading one to expect another cheesy, moralistic "Moment of Truth" type chick flick. "Lucky Girl" is anything but. It's a flawed but relentlessly absorbing character study that keeps the suspense flowing until the end. There's literally not a dull moment. The exquisite Elisha Cuthbert, Canada's answer to Marilyn Monroe, gives a strong performance as a high school honors student who develops an addiction to gambling. The movie is anything but a case study, though: it's almost a worse-case scenario of just how much trouble teenage girls are capable of getting into, almost a cross between "thirteen" and "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me." Though not as troubled, Cuthbert's character does bear a certain resemblance to the late lamented Laura Palmer as played by Sheryl Lee. She's a gorgeous high school girl who goes to a school where all the girls are gorgeous . . . literally! There's not a single ugly girl or even a respectable plain Jane on site! This is a high school where everybody is rich, good-looking, and spends all their money on football pools and poker. Besides Ms. Cuthbert, my favorite was Charlotte Sullivan as the decadent rich girl whose older brother becomes the heroine's partner in crime. All Cuthbert wants to do is earn money for a post-graduation trip to Europe with her BFF, but what starts with scratch-offs rapidly escalates into football pools, poker, after-hour casinos run by Asian gangsters featuring truly bad lounge singers, drugs, pornography, and the burglarizing of her own house. Cuthbert and Sherry Miller (as her mom) won the Canadian equivalent of Emmys, but the whole cast is excellent. This film is so melodramatic and over-the-top as to defy plausibility, but its relentlessly grim tone at least has the virtue of making viewers feel better about their own boring lives. As teenage bad-girl movies go, this one is one of the best, and is miles above such pathetic Hollywood drivel as "Freeway," despite the latter having Reese Witherspoon as its star.

This movie proves an old and wasted theory. A good cast promises a great movie. Hollywood always tries to do such thing like in Ocean's Eleven. Put every actor in it and you have a 100 million dollar movie. Lets put Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts (The Mexican) in a flick and its guaranteed. Well, both of those movies are not good, they are what I like to call COMMERCIAL MOVIES. The Lucky Girl was shot in Canada with low budget for T.V . It has an amazing cast that don't need to say cheasy lines to get a reaction. Their non - verbal communication, (faces and gestures they make) is breathtaking. You can sense the desperation Elisha Cutbeth feels, is is IS........SO GOOD! It truly was a wonderful experience that made me stay up till 4 in the morning.It's good to see a T.V movie that has plot and great GREAT GREAT ACTING_!

Great made-for-TV fun. A little edgier than your typical Lifetime fare and not nearly as cheesy (but cheesy enough to satisfy that cheese-jones). More realistic high school setting than one usually sees in these things, and the actors actually looked the ages they were supposed to portray. Good performances, good writing, and gotta love the not-so-happy ending.