What a disappointment. Lay the Favorite, opening this weekend, sports a fine director, Stephen Frears (The Queen, High Fidelity, The Snapper), and a promising cast (Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall, Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Carroll Lynch). But the story fails, and it’s just not funny.
Willis plays a Vegas sports gambler who apprentices a naive young thing (Hall). They face the ups and downs of sports betting, his embittered wife, a welching better (Lynch) and a sleazeball bookie (Vince Vaughan). Nothing in the story rings true. Rebecca Hall, so good as the classy smart girl in Vicky Christina Barcelona, plays Florida trailer trash – even wearing Daisy Dukes throughout the whole movie – and it just doesn’t work. Worse, Vince Vaughan takes his usual wild man to an even more manic level, which falls flat.
Skip it.
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