Lohan, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lind-say-low-han: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of (three or) four steps (depending on how you pronounce her last name) down the palate to tap, at four, on the soft palate. Lin. Say. Lo. Han (or Loan). She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing five foot five in one boot. She was Lindsay in slacks. She was Linds at school. She was Lindsay on the dotted line. But in my dreams she was always Lohan.

If only she would stop making movies like  Just My Luck.

Not that there is anything wrong with it. It is not funny, but is supposed to be a comedy. It evokes no sentiment or tears, and it supposed to be a romance. It is set in Manhattan but does not capture the spirit of the city (but then, few of the recent comedies set there have, perhaps because they are usually shot in Toronto).

Lohan has herself been very lucky. She has had, in essence, nine lives. But is her luck running out?

There is a marvelous moment, a typically Lohanian moment in the middle of what at this point remains Lindsay Lohan’s magnum opus,  Mean Girls. Her character, Cady Heron, is a newcomer to school serving as something of an undercover agent or sleeper cell on behalf of her newfound nerd friends and against the school’s elite “Heathers” who have oppressed them.

Thanks to plot complications, Cady has joined the mean girls of the title in a Christmas talent show. Dressed in Santa hats, higher elf drag, and go-go boots, the four girls come out to dance to “Jingle Bell Rock.” It is a given within the history of the school that the mean girls always “win” the contest.

 

 

Lohan as Cady dances the other girls off the fucking screen. It’s a moment of revelation, like Astaire, or Kelly, or Travolta in their first films, and one regret for her fans among Lohan’s tumultuous life and career direction is that dancing has been minimized (her mother was briefly a Rockette). Her co-stars are no mean achievers themselves. Chief meanie Rachel McAdams went on to pop fame in  A Walk to Remember and  Red Eye; Lacey Chabert will be seen shortly in the  Black Christmas remake; and the exotic looking Amanda Seyfried has appeared in  Veronica Mars and the HBO show  Big Love. And this is not to put them down, but none of them evince the absolute joy in movement, the confidence and sassiness that define both a great dancer and a mega star.

How many lives does Lohan have left? Has Lohan indeed not become a mean girl on her own (abusing Disneyland staff, for example) in what readers of magazines take to be her private life? If so, too bad, because Lohan has the potential to be the next great screen star, a new Julia Roberts, able to straddle romantic comedies and Oscar winning dramas.

Lohan built a lot of good will with that scene and that movie. But she wasn’t able to capitalize on it. What she needed to do was to solidify public love with another romantic comedy, just as Julia Roberts consolidated public affection generated by  Mystic Pizza and  Steel Magnolias by leaping into  Pretty Woman. She needed to appear across from a man of equal or higher stature so that she can share it and feed off it.Instead, she opted for serious indie-hood by appearing in a Robert Altman film, which is a crap shoot, since his films are so uneven and few people go see them. Normally I wouldn’t care to dwell on the career aspect of an actress (these thoughts, by the way, are a tacit admision of one’s real inferiorty in the face of the mean girl in Lohan), but I like her so much I want to see more of her movies (just as I want her mirror image, Storm Large, to keep going on  Rock Star even though I don’t want her to win). But of her forthcoming films —  Speechless, an updating of  Cyrano based on an  L. Sprague De Camp story;  Chapter 27, the second of two forthcoming movies about Mark David Chapman;  A Woman of No Importance, the Oscar Wilde play directed by the unpromising  Janusz Kaminski (and which will require a British acceent?),  Bobby, another assassination story, this one about the night Kennedy was shot  — only one,  Georgia Rule, sounds like they might fit this bill  sounds like it might fit the bill, partially because the cast is strong (Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman, Dermot Mulroney, Cary Elwes) and is directed by  Pretty Woman‘s Gary Marshall (who has, unfortunately, been dreadful lately. In fact, he was dreadful in Pretty Woman but the movie transcended its ineptitude). In almost all of these productions, Lohan has garnered headlines about her behavior, on and off the set.

Lohan is a new breed of star whom most adults probably don’t understand. Like Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, and Hilary Duff, they are singer-actors, who feud with each other across the pages of competing tabloids. They have high school-ized the media and live their lives in contra-distinction to the “moral lessons” their movies tell, like the mean girls they play against. Even a  New York Times article in May of 2006 fretted out loud about Lohan burning herself out. But Lohan is clearly resilient. She has already had nine lives, and unlike the cat of the fable, may have nine more before she’s through.

 

1) Started out as a young Natalie Wood, in the Shirley Temple – Lolita mode, a preternaturally talented and charismatic child actress.

2)  As a “Disney star” with all that means about living up to a certain style or standard of kid behavior and fealty to parents. (Are actors auteurs? Can a kid star be said to choose films that reflect her personality? Can thematic  similarities be found among the young star’s films?)

3)  As a “Tweener” star, hinting at sex and boys without explicit references.

4) In an alternate career as Lindsay the singer, with two albums out.

5) In the real world, as a “Law and Order” victim of her dad’s hi-jinks.

6)  As she matured, as the jilted lover pulling an Ava Gardner going to war with the tabloid and paparazzi and indulging in self-destructive behavior.

7)  Thanks to the Altman film and a few others coming up, as a future indie queen.

8)  As an actor – auteur. But are actors auteurs? Can a kid be said to choose films that reflect her personality?

9) But ultimately, there is Lindsay,  the sexy dancer, the new Ann-Margret, waiting first for her  Bye Bye Birdie, and then for her  Carnal Knowledge.

 

Just My Luck is directed by Donald Petrie, who was probably a good choice. He has had a few 100 million dollar hits, and he was the sherpa for one of Roberts’s best early performances in  Mystic Pizza. He has a knack for working with sex symbols (as in   The Favor), but is helpless before a bad or indifferent script, such as the one with which  Just My Luck is burdened, credited to a smorgasbord of writers, among them I. Marlene King (Senior Trip), Amy Harris (Sex and the City), Jonathan Bernstein, James Greer, and Mark Blackwell ( Max Keeble’s Big Move). 

 

 

You can tell that many hands (but no Lohan) were involved in the composition because they can’t even keep straight the definition of look, as other reviewers have noted, as it tells of a curiously lucky girl (she was named homecoming queen of a high school she didn’t even go to) in one of those vague Manhattan comedy jobs whose luck is transfered to a loser (Chris Pine)  . The supplementary material doesn’t help much. There are three deleted scenes, only one of which is substantial and could have stood to remain in the movie, plus there is the short featurette “Look of Luck,” and a behind-the-scenes look at the band, McFly, that figures in the plot.

The disc has a fine widescreen transfer with a full frame transfer on the B side.  Just My Luck hit the street on Tuesday, August 22nd, and retails for $29.95.

 

Comments: None

Leave a Reply Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Δ