Sam, the spunky protagonist of the affable family film “Luck,” has had a lifetime of bad breaks. She spent her childhood in foster care, and when the film begins, she has reached adulthood without ever being adopted. Punctures and falling shelves no longer phase her. It is only when younger children, like her friend Hazel, are not adopted by a foster family that the injustice of fortune discourages Sam. Hazel wants a lucky penny to charm her first encounter with a family, and Sam is determined to help.
Sam (voiced by Eva Noblezada) comes across a shiny penny after locking eyes with a black cat, but she loses the penny before she can give it to Hazel. She howls in frustration at the cat who lingered in the very place where she found the penny. To his surprise, the cat expresses his own dismay.
Sam chases the talking cat, named Bob (voiced by Simon Pegg), through a portal to another world: the magical land of luck. Here, good luck is crafted and carefully distributed throughout the human world by teams of pixies, unicorns, and dragons. To find new money, Sam and Bob must go through this makeshift factory together.
It’s an engaging concept for a film, and Kiel Murray’s original screenplay blends familiar tropes for luck into a novel setting. Director Peggy Holmes keeps the film’s three-dimensional animation bright and full of impeccably rendered detail. The hair falls photorealistically out of place, the toast looks steep enough to hold its jam. But the images often fall into a visual cliché – there’s an overabundance of lucky greens, and the character design often favors cute details, like pink scales to soften a dragon. “Luck” offers new ideas; his only misfortune is to present his gifts in recycled packaging.
Chance
Rated G. Duration: 1h45. Watch on Apple TV+.