When I’ve mentioned to people that I like Lindsay Lohan, the actress, I’ve gotten the same looks as if I’ve said I like the taste of light bulbs. Though she’s become a staple in Us Weekly because of her partying ways and the fluctuating weight, it’s easy to lose sight that her talent, not her figure, got her in the door. Does anyone remember Freaky Friday? Anyone? With the right script, she can shine. I stand by that.

My job will become that much harder if the 19-year-old keeps appearing in fare like Just My Luck. Lohan stars as a P.R. agent living a life in which good luck sticks to her like dandruff. Give her a lottery ticket to scratch, she’ll win something. One elevator door closes; another one opens. Meanwhile, elsewhere in New York City, a young music promoter (Chris Pine) has nothing but bad luck, which we find out courtesy of a drawn-out sequence.

Through fate, the comely professional and the hunky, struggling businessman meet at the masquerade ball she’s organized. Their eyes meet, they dance among the strobe lights and glitterati, and they kiss. It’s a magical kiss because her luck suddenly turns awful; he suffers the opposite effect. For her, this cannot stand, so she goes on a mission to find the masked man whose kiss turned her life upside down.

In the hands of director Daniel Petrie (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) and two screenwriters (plus three more credited with the story), a breezy romantic comedy of mistaken identity and happenstance becomes a witless, leaden affair. Pine and Lohan negotiating their change in fortune is discarded in favor of lame, never-ending bits. Oh, wait, here’s Lohan kissing random dudes; that can’t go well! Get ready to watch her operate a floor waxer wearing high heels! By the time Lohan unloads a box of laundry detergent in the washing machine, you wonder if Petrie and his crew of scribes are working from a collection of I Love Lucy scripts, or if a frontal lobotomy was part of the smooch’s power.

The reliance on lame slapstick is odd, since a) it saps any romantic ambiance and b) it doesn’t give a chance for the star-crossed lovers to build personalities that fit each other. The movie is a schizophrenic mess, with Lohan playing a career-minded woman with an active love life, despite the script’s teenage tendencies (no booze, no sex, just great clothes and kisses). It feels like she’s playing dress-up. And that’s Lindsay Lohan's dilemma. She’s growing up in the multiplex, and Just My Luck marks another awkward point in her maturation as an actress, and another reason for moviegoers to (perhaps unfairly) deride her.

The DVD includes a couple of featurettes and three deleted scenes.



Ow, my eye.