a movie review by: Susan Granger

This is John Travolta's unlucky year. First, "Battlefield Earth." Now, this long-delayed dark comedy directed by Nora Ephron ("Sleepless in Seattle," "You've Got Mail"). Travolta is Russ Richards, an overextended Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, TV weatherman who plots with a sexy, promiscuous Lotto-ball girl, Crystal Latroy, played by Lisa Kudrow ("Friends"), to rig the state numbers game to win $6.4 million. Crystal gets her moronic cousin (documentary film-maker Michael Moore) to purchase the winning ticket, but their double-dealing caper crumbles as everyone who knows about it wants a piece of the action. In the script by Adam Resnick ("Cabin Boy"), which is loosely based on a real incident from the '80s when someone tried to fix the daily number drawing in the Pennsylvania lottery, Russ Richards is a self-centered celebrity who has his own reserved table at the local Denny's and promises his audiences unseasonably mild weather in December. Problem is: he's is a shallow, unsympathetic character, as is Crystal Latroy - and neither John Travolta nor Lisa Kudrow can overcome that fatal flaw. No one cares if Richards' snowmobile business is tanking and that he may lose his beloved Jaguar convertible. In fact, all the characters - from Tim Roth as a strip club owner to Ed O'Neill as the TV station manager to Michael Rapaport as a hip-hop thug wielding a lethal World Series commemorative bat - are tacky, greedy and unethical. But Bill Pullman lends comic relief as a bumbling, inept cop who unwittingly breaks the case. When did John Travolta's voice get so whiny and irritating? And why is he eating himself out of a career as a leading man? On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Lucky Numbers" is a mocking, mean-spirited 3. Everyone emerges a loser.

John Travolta Photograph

Lisa Kudrow Photo

Tim Roth Photo