Lucky Numbers

Plot synopsis:
In 1988 Russ Richards (John Travolta), the weatherman for a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania television station, is revered as a local celebrity by his viewers, and fame affords him such perks as a reserved parking spot and his own booth at Denny's, where an omelet bears his name. His eternally optimistic demeanor conceals the fact his snowmobile dealership is on the verge of bankruptcy due to an unusually warm winter.
His friend Gig (Tim Roth), a shady strip club owner, suggests an insurance scam will free Russ of his financial problems, but when the scheme fails to pay off, Russ finds himself even deeper in debt and the target of a hitman named Dale (Michael Rapaport). Gig then proposes Russ rig the Pennsylvania Lottery with the help of his amoral girlfriend Crystal Latroy (Lisa Kudrow), a ditzy model who pulls and announces the winning numbers on television, and her oddball cousin Walter (Michael Moore), who will pose as the owner of the lucky ticket.
Their plan works, but before the $6.4 million jackpot can be claimed, everything begins to unravel. First, Walter gets greedy, refuses to hand the winning ticket over to his cousin and Crystal's physical confrontation triggers Walter's ultimately fatal asthma attack. Sleazy station manager Dick Simmons (Ed O'Neill), who also is sleeping with Crystal, tries to blackmail her and Russ when he discovers what they have done, and others who have uncovered what appears to be the worst kept secret in town demand their share as well.
Mayhem and murder ensue, prompting lazy detectives Lakewood (Bill Pullman) and Chambers (Daryl Mitchell) to initiate an investigation they hope will not be too taxing. Russ decides to sell the ticket to Dick for $100,000 to get clear of the debt he owes to Dale. Crystal is irate, and she immediately seduces Dick to get back into her share of the winnings. Dale breaks into Dick's house and tries to rob the ticket from him, but the police arrive, and Lakewood ends up killing him.
On his way home, Lakewood comes across Russ who has jackknifed and overturned an 18-wheeler as he tries to unload his snowmobile inventory on another dealer. Fearing Lakewood has come to arrest him, Russ flees with his $100,000 on a snowmobile but crashes into a tree. At the hospital, Lakewood gives him a ticket for operating the snowmobile without a license and explains what happened to Dick and Dale. Russ goes to Dick's hospital room and steals the lottery ticket back. He gives it to Wendy the waitress from Denny's (Maria Bamford) and moves to Florida where he becomes a successful host of a gameshow called "Lucky Numbers".

Tags: comedy, murder

Review:
I thought John Travolta, Lisa Kudrow and Tim Roth and Ed O'Neill gave fine performances.
With the exception of Jennifer Aniston in Office Space and maybe David Schwimmer in Apt Pupil.I really dug the Midwest American setting, the two bumbling cops, how Travolta's character Russ Richards wallows and loves his local celebrity status and his reserved parking spot at the local Denny's, and the great 80's soundtrack.
And this has to be the first flick directed by Nora Ephron that I enjoyed.Adam Resnick wrote the screenplay for Lucky Numbers and the more recent Death To Smoochy.
Both these films are good but flawed dark comedies and deserve to be seen and enjoyed.
I do think John Travolta gives one of his best performances, since he doesn't play the usual tough guy you see him play in movies like "Saturday Night Fever" and "Get Shorty." Instead, he plays a total wimp of a celebrity, and he pulls it off with flying colors.
"Lucky Numbers" is just a well-written film with a lot of great gags, and I would recommend this to anyone who's a fan of dark comedies..
Working from a screenplay by Adam Resnick, director Nora Ephron diverts from her usual domain of romantic comedy to skirt the perimeter of Scorsese territory with `Lucky Numbers,' a black comedy of errors starring John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow.
Kudrow is Crystal Latroy, who works for the same station as Richards, as the `Vanna White' of the state lottery show; she's the girl who pulls the ping-pong balls from the tube and calls out the winning numbers.
But when you have characters with names like `Gig' (Tim Roth) and `Dale the Thug' (Michael Rapaport), you're going to get some chuckles no matter what, especially when one of them is wielding a baseball bat for all the wrong reasons.
This is a funny movie, though not uproariously so; things happen that you will laugh at in spite of yourself, while at other times there are moments that are genuinely side-splitting hilarious (one in particular, near the end, that involves an eighteen-wheeler).
This may not be Ephron's crowning achievement cinematically, but nevertheless, `Lucky Numbers' is entertaining and good for some laughs.
This movie desperately needed better screenplay and better ending to it.Fair black comedy though becouse of the great cast and the powers of Travolta and Kudrow.Unfairly cut down by many critics.It is worth a watch as long as you do not expect a classic which I'm sure most knowledgable movie goers will not.The director shoud have made it more underground and less mainstream given the style chosen to do this film........
And on top of that John Travolta, Bill Pullman and Lisa Kudrow deliver hilarious performances and prove how great actors they are.
Travolta is actually fairly low-key, Kudrow is not as annoying as I expected, and decent cameos/supporting performances by Ed O'Neill, Darryl Mitchell & Bill Pullman (as good cop/bad cop), Michael Moore (!?!), and Tim Roth.
The plot has a successfull weatherman and snowmotor businessman played by John Travolta in a somewhat redeemable performance (after Battlefield Earth, even though he wasn't bad in that).
So, he and his girl (Lisa Kudrow is wickedly cruel yet sometimes funny) get the idea to rig the lottery, but things go wrong.
The film is all over the map, with too many characters and a lot of plot going into something that doesn't need it, and I'm talking about a dark comedy here, so know where I'm coming from.
2 very funny scenes though almost make up the utter lulls in the film: a scene where Travolta has a blank expression on his face while trying to report the weather and hearing about a murder linked to him; and the 2 exceptional scenes with Michael Moore (of Roger & Me fame) as Kudrow's pathetic, asthmatic cousin.
Save your money, this movie's a sleeper, and go do something better with your time --- this film simply doesn't payoff..
Travolta's last good movie was 1997's SHE'S SO LOVELY.Lisa Kudrow does her best, but can't save the movie.
Unfortunately he only appears at the end of the movie when you are so bored that you are not longer interested in what is happening next.Good cast (except Travolta), poor story, nothing special.
Even a cast featuring John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow could not make this picture worth seeing.
With a great casting (John Travolta, Bill Pullman, Lisa Kudrow, Tim Roth, Ed O'Neill, Michael Rapaport, and also Michael Moore!, the director and producer of Farenheit 9/11, playing a funny role in it) that makes the movie even better than just an original script!.
Simply watch it and make your own conclusion; for me it's a really good movie, not a piece of art, but a well obtained entertaining movie!About the Movie: This funny and entertaining movie is about Russ Richards (John Travolta), a famous and charismatic television weatherman, that is broke because he lives a life that he cant't afford; he starts a snowmobile business, but he can't sell anything because of the warm weather, desperate, he run an insurance scam and decides with her friend and lover Crystal (Lisa Kudrow), and some additional help (Gig (Tim Roth) and Crystal cousin Walter (Michael Moore)), to manipulate fraudulently the state lottery; they then start a quest around all these decisions and evolve in a entertaining, funny and tense story.7/10!
This film wasn't it.`Lucky Numbers' is a dark comedy about two hapless employees of a local Harrisburg TV station who try to fix the state lottery.
Well, someone needs to inform the writers, actors and director in Lucky Numbers about this fact because there was nothing funny in this movie.
These dumb characters are actually believable and well drawn, so it doesn't feel like an intelligence insult.Lucky Numbers is a dark comedy based on the real lottery scandal in Pennsylvania in 1980.
Facing bankruptcy, his friend Gig (Tim Roth) suggests for him and his evil girlfriend (Lisa Kudrow) to rig the lottery.
Lisa Kudrow plays Crystal, a model at the TV stations who pulls the numbers during the lottery program.
Will Russ get out in one piece?The flaw that really gave the movie its bad rap was how many characters got introduced and how many times their roles in the scam kept changing.
Russ Richards (John Travolta) is a local TV celebrity weatherman and he's broke after opening a snowmobile dealership.
Gig's next scheme is to rig the state lottery with the help of his amoral girlfriend Crystal Latroy (Lisa Kudrow) who pulls the numbers on TV.
Lisa Kudrow and Travolta are truly funny together and the other actors add a lot to the film, they are so well cast.
Effective performances, worth seeing just to watch Travolta and Kudrow in a great comic team.
LUCKY NUMBERS / (2000) *** (out of four)By Blake French:	In order for a black comedy to work, characters and situations need to be of a serious nature, and a story needs to incorporate a sick sense of humor within those variables.
But "Lucky Numbers" does everything else right, and director Nora Ephron captures an amusing sense of humor in her somewhat contentious production.
The film stars John Travolta as Russ Richards, a celebrity of a weather reporter in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
The base lotto girl, Crystal (Lisa Kudrow from TV's "Friends"), whom with Russ and his Station manager, Dick (Ed O'Neill), are both having sex, is easily convinced to help him rig the lottery which will land them both in a jackpot of over six-million bucks.
Walter (documentary filmmaker Michael Moore), Crystal's asthmatic cousin, gets second ideas about helping the team with their scheme and wants a larger share of the money; being "the middle man," is hard work, you know.
John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow do a good job of playing their characters straight and serious.
There are a few too many characters here, and the movie finds itself running out of elbow room near the end, but the story is still entertaining enough to hold out interest for the majority of the time.
Overall, the film is worth a watch just to see such a biting comic duo by Kudrow and Travolta-all the rest is extra credit..
You would think with Lisa Kudrow, John Travolta, Ed O'Neill, and Bill Pullman in the cast you could expect a fun, clever movie.
Travolta is so charming and so real that Lucky Numbers is worth seeing for his performance alone, although the rest of the cast - notably Kudrow and Pullman - are excellent as well.
I was expecting more based on the trailers I saw, but I like black comedies where there are lots of screw ups, lots of dead bodies and a few quirky characters so I wasn't that disappointed.
John Travolta wasn't great, Lisa Kudrow's character was one-note- far from "one of the greatest women's parts ever" Nora Ephron claims it to be in the interview segment on the dvd, and the story was kind of glossed over in favor of showing people arguing.
Plus it's a major disappointment to see a good director like Nora Eprhron (Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry met Sally) to have to use such tactics in her movie.
(Found out through IMDB).It was just a weak plot, I'd hate to say it was bad acting because there were so many good actors associated with the movie.
oh the movie itself huh, it was pretty good, mainly cause of Ed, john was his usual cool guy and Lisa was the usual bend me over girl like she always plays.Go Al  that's my overall opinion.
Taking advantage of the Cineplex's "free pop refill", I exited the theatre once to get my self another large vat of cola to continue what up to that point had been an sometimes funny comedy of errors, but when I returned things simply stopped being funny.Its like watching Adam Sandler's "The Waterboy" -- ooooh, I can talk in a funny accent...
Taking advantage of the Cineplex's "free pop refill", I exited the theatre once to get my self another large vat of cola to continue what up to that point had been an sometimes funny comedy of errors, but when I returned things simply stopped being funny.Its like watching Adam Sandler's "The Waterboy" -- ooooh, I can talk in a funny accent...
It gets tired after a while.The same goes for John Travolta in this dozer of a flick --- oooh, I'll mug and say "gosh golly gee, how can this be happening to me."But its not only on the comedy where Lucky Numbers fails to produce results...
It gets tired after a while.The same goes for John Travolta in this dozer of a flick --- oooh, I'll mug and say "gosh golly gee, how can this be happening to me."But its not only on the comedy where Lucky Numbers fails to produce results...
I know, in the hands of a good writer that sounds like it could become a good move.Bottom line: After watching 2 hours of John Travolta doing an Adam Sandler imitation you will want your money back..
Besides, any film that has Michael Moore (a bad propaganda-movie maker and even worse actor and director) in its list of cast members can't have much chance of being quality stuff.Having realized after the first 10 minutes that this movie is going to be relentless in its pursuit of unfunniness, I was half-hoping that Travolta would once again introduce the concept of "leverage" into the plot.
Get out of Hollywoo and Beverly Hills.The one major exception - TIM ROTH, funny, bright, somewhat believable.Please don't waste your money on this movie or rental.I don't understand how Ms. Ephron has become this iconoclastic, Hollywood, revered individual.
It's not a laugh-out-loud comedy, there's no slapstick gags, but it doesn't try too hard and I think that's what makes it work most of the time.
LUCKY NUMBERS (2000) * John Travolta, Lisa Kudrow, Tim Roth, Ed O' Neill, Michael Rapaport, Daryl Mitchell, Bill Pullman, Michael Moore, Richard Schiff, Michael Weston.
Like Steve Martin in `L.A. Story' and Bill Murray in `Groundhog Day', John Travolta plays a hapless forecaster with a yen to something better.The something for Russ Richards (Travolta), Harrisburg, PA's local celebrity weatherman, it is a desire to become a game show host by any means necessary (echoes of `To Die For') which leads him to shirk his big-fish-in-a-small pond status and his going nowhere snowmobile sales dealership that is floundering ironically due to unseasonably warm weather for the winter.
Russ, up to his neck in debt with a 30 day foreclosure on his house and his taste for a sporty Jag to tool around in to his private booth at the local Denny's (featuring the Russ Richards Omelette), conspires with his mistress Crystal (Kudrow, finally breaking away from her ditsy Emmy winning role as Phoebe on the sitcom blockbuster `Friends'), the lottery girl at the tv station, and his good buddy Gig (Roth) the proprietor of a strip club, to rig the state lottery with a surefire scheme to win the $6.4 M stake at hand.
Characters are sloppily thrown in - Crystal's asthmatic, masturbating (thankfully off-screen) cousin Walter (rabble-rousing filmmaker Moore who provides some limited humor) is introduced as the dupe to cash in the winning claim ticket; Mitchell and Pullman as respectively an overzealous by-the-book rookie and slacker police team investigating the crime(s) at hand (Pullman seems to be doing a variation of his `stupidest man alive' character from `Ruthless People'); local bookie (Schiff, completely wasted in a pointed cameo); Rapaport cornering the cottage industry has set himself up for on another variation of mindless streetwise thugs as Dale The Thug (I'm not making that up either!) - while the threadebare plot by veteran comedy scribe Adam Resnick (including `The Larry Sanders Show' and Chris Elliott's cult sitcom classic `Get A Life') is staggeringly ill-conceived (based loosely on the real-life 1980 Pennsylvania Lottery fix) from the get go.
The film overall feels half-baked and a hybrid of a crime drama and a black comedy ( I guess) of `A Simple Plan' and the aforementioned `Ruthless People' which only appears to be unlucky in the end run..
'Very Bad Things' was a complete failure, but who's Peter Berg to try something so difficult?Nora Ephron, one of my favorite directors of the past ten years, has a great script with 'Lucky Numbers.' I hate the title, though.
(Lately, it seems the people making movies name their projects the first thing that comes to mind.) A better title here would have been 'Balls.' This would be referring to Lisa Kudrow's character, though, and not John Travolta's.
John Travolta leads the rest on an amazing performance playing Russ Richards a Weather man and a game show host-wannabe.
Lisa Kudrow plays the best character in the whole film, playing Crystal, the dumb sexy girl who cares only of herself.
Lucky numbers says the story about the famous weatherman (Travolta) who needs to pay a whole bunch of money in deads.
"Lucky Numbers" has Travolta in the center as a schmuck weather man who, with the t.v. station's  "lottery girl" (Kudrow), sets about to rip off the state lottery for a cool $6 mil.
Lisa Kudrow has never been more entertaining and John Travolta was awesome as he always is.
John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow are good (although you will be wishing Kudrow's character would meet a semi).Set in 1988, this story is about what happens to a popular weather man who rigs the state lottery with the help of his girlfriend who happens to be the lottery "ball girl".
What's funny is watching how deep the characters get into trouble and how each attempt to get out of trouble gets them in even further.Although 100 different directors besides Nora Ephron could have done this movie better, it's not a bad recovery from Hanging Up.
This movie is actually pretty funny, but given the talent involved I think that people expected more, and were disappointed.
or the other way.I like Mr Travolta's character, he is so funny and i do like him to play multi characters in all his movie.Good one to enjoy..
This film demonstrates the comedic talents of John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow.
Ed O'Neill and Tim Roth are great at what they do in this movie.
Its a Dark Comedy starring John Travolta as a news channel weather man down and out on his luck and decides to devise a plan to win the Harrisburg State Lottery.
Travolta is always a pleasure to watch as well as good performances by Tim Roth and Bill Pullman.
To start Lisa Kudrow and Jonh Travolta, but also Bill Pullman,Ed O'Neill,Daryl Mitchell and even Michael Moore!
Both John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow are television personalities in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Lucky Numbers (2000): Dir: Nora Ephron / Cast: John Travolta, Lisa Kudrow, Tim Roth, Bill Pullman, Ed O'Neill: Anything but lucky for those unfortunate enough to see it.
John Travolta plays an adored weatherman who is joined by lottery girl Lisa Kudrow in rigging the lottery.
"Russ Richards" (John Travolta) is a famous television weather reporter who also happens to own a snowmobile dealership.
Likewise, his girlfriend "Crystal" (Lisa Kudrow) is also facing some money problems and at the urging of Russ' friend "Gig" (Tim Roth) they come up with a plan to rig the Pennsylvania state lottery in order to win $6.4 million.
In any case, although I liked the performances of both Tim Roth and Lisa Kudrow, I felt the overall movie could have used some improvement here and there and because of that I have to rate this film as slightly below average..
Lisa Kudrow has proven herself as a great character actress (like in the opposite of sex, analize this, romy and michell, friends) she was IMHO the only saving grace in this movie..
The story was somewhat weak, but the acting of John Travolta, Lisa Kudrow, Ed o'Neill and Michael Rapaport made up for the sometimes boring scenes.