Not believable, but it does have a nice theme ...

I enjoyed this film, although I found the premise rather unbelievable. If you need believability in your movies, you won't like this one at all. On the other hand, if you enjoy the two themes "what goes around comes around," and "every loser has a beautiful woman destined for him", then you'll probably enjoy this film. I'll give it four stars - it was better than average, but the underlying plot of the movie was not developed enough to make the movie realistic.

So Bernie (William H. Macy) is a cooler. What is that? It’s a dude that brings bad luck - really bad luck - to a table in a casino. Say some guy is winning really big - maybe he's up $100,000 or something. All Bernie has to do is walk up, tap him on the shoulder, and all of a sudden he starts losing. Stretch your belief a bit - I suppose it could happen.

Because he makes the players lose, the casino owner Shelley (Alec Baldwin) really likes him. If some guy is beating the house, Shelley can send Bernie over, and all of a sudden that player loses everything, and the house comes out ahead once again. This is great for the casino owner. The problem is that Bernie wants out of this depressing job – how fun can it be to turn people into losers?

So now Bernie meets his destiny Natalie (Maria Bello). His luck has suddenly changed. He is in love: he walks into the casino and people don’t start to suddenly lose. This makes Shelley want to throw Natalie out, but of course she has fallen in love with the loser, and true love will conquer all.

Can you believe that? 1) That there exists a person whose luck is so bad he can infect those around him? And 2) that some really hot chick is going to fall in love with the ultimate loser?

Chances are that you are not supposed to believe this when you pop the DVD in the player. But the movie develops, it’s supposed to make you believe. And that is the biggest problem with this movie: it never explained how Bernie got such poor luck or how his poor luck is contagious. There is a brief moment where Natalie puts a few tarot cards on a table and almost gets to an explanation. There is another brief moment when Bernie’s son starts to make an explanation. Only the explanation is never delivered: It is as if script assumes that somebody whose luck is so bad that it is contagious is as usual as a rising sun.

But the cooler effect is not the only thing weakly developed. The relationship is never explained, either. We never get the explanation as to how a hot chick falls in love with a complete loser. Do hot women simply fall in love with losers as a matter of course? Does she love him because his poor luck is interesting? Is it because he is a nice guy? That he sticks up for her? That he's great in bed? There is never an explanation for this relationship; rather, there is a scene where suddenly she wakes up and is in love with him. Weak, and not all that realistic.

The themes, however, are rather enjoyable and give a nice, satisfied feeling as the story unfolds. Our two themes are that 1) what goes around comes around, and 2) even the most luckless loser in the world can find love with a beautiful woman. As for the first theme, the movie has truly evil people and truly nice people. The truly evil people get what’s coming to them, and the truly nice people – namely Bernie – they get the cute girl. It’s always nice to know that some guy who just gave you the finger will get what’s coming to him. And as for the second theme – that even a luckless loser like Bernie can get a beautiful woman - that’s got to feel good, too. We have all felt like luckless losers at some point in our lives, and it’s nice to know that there is someone out there for everybody.

The is another quality aspect of this film: Alec Baldwin was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Shelly. Despite the film's dissociation with reality, Alec is a bit of a bright spot. His character is stuck in an Old School philosophy. He believes in the use of coolers, he believes in the old-school Frank Sinatra-type crooning as a headlining show, and he believes in a small, conservative casino instead of some glitzy thing with a roller coaster. His acting is very good - we can believe his character, we can believe his motives, and he shows a great range of emotion. He didn't win the Academy Award for this role - possibly because the rest of the movie was so weak - but still, his performance was rather strong.

Despite Alec's strong performance, the film suffers from believability. On the other hand, it has a really nice overall theme: ugly, loser, nerdy guy gets cute, pretty girl because he treats her better than all the other scum she has known in her life. I like that. I liked the story: I found it better than average even with the unbelievable luck problem - it gets four stars from me.

Before I leave I will mention the rating here: the DVD I have is rated R, and it has a lot of sexual scenes, a lot of language issues, and quite a lot of violence. Apparently there is a "Director's Cut" out there that has even more sex and violence, and was released as "unrated" because the MPAA tried to give it an NC-17. Now you know.

Our partial cast:

William H. Macy - Bernie Lootz (the luckless loser)
Alec Baldwin - Shelly Kaplow (the casino owner)
Maria Bello - Natalie Belisario (the good luck chick)
Shawn Hatosy - Mikey (Bernie's loser son)
Ron Livingston - Larry Sokolov (The Harvard MBA guy who wants to change the casino)
Paul Sorvino - Buddy Stafford, the washed-up singer
Estella Warren - Charlene (Mikey's loser wife)
Arthur J. Nascarella - Nicky Fingers Bonnatto (Shelly's confidante)
Joey Fatone - Johnny Cappella (Buddy's fresh replacement)