Lucky Numbers is a comedy with a cast of recognizable actors. It's a story set in 1988 (Dave wondered why it was set in 1988, I have to agree as I don't think it's based on real-life events and a dozen years ago is not far enough back to establish a distinctive atmosphere than it if it were set today). We have Russ Richards (John Travolta), a local news weatherman, rather photogenic and popular with viewers. Russ dreams of being a game-show host and endeavors to maintain a good-guy image with lots of charity work and public appearances. Russ is well paid, with a large house and a snowmobile business (and he's just a weatherman, not a meteorologist -- tv talent gets paid well). But there's a bit of a heat wave in December, which means no snow, no snowmobile sales, and mounting bills that can't be paid.

What's Russ to do? His station manager, Dick Simmons (Ed O'Neill), won't give him an advance on account that Dick found out that Russ was looking for a game-show host job. Russ' shady aquaintance, Gig (Tim Roth), has an insurance scam involving the snowmobile dealership, but that goes foul. But Gig has another plan: to win the Pennsylvania lottery (the movie is set in Harrisburg, which I will always associate with it being a major city in the Autoduel game I played on my Commodore 64). This plan involves Russ' girlfriend, Crystal Latroy (Lisa Kudrow), otherwise known as "The Lotto Girl" since she's the one who pulls out the balls and announces them.

The rest of the movie is about pulling off the job and all the things that go wrong afterwards as more and more people find out about the lottery scam and try to get in on the action. It's funny in a black comedy sort of way. You don't really sympathize strongly with any character as they're all not very nice people. Russ is shallow and doesn't want to hurt anyone; he's generally a nice guy (in a slimy sort of way) who is driven to desperate measures. Crystal is just shallow and headstrong and a bit simple-minded. Heck, no one in the movie strikes me as an Einstein, with Gig being the only person that seems to remain in control of himself at all times.

As I said, there are other recognizable people in the film. Michael Rapaport plays Dale the Thug, a freelance killer and muscle guy who likes to use his 1986 autographed baseball bat. Michael Moore has a small role as Crystal's cousin from Ohio, who buys the winning lottery ticket. Richard Schiff has a small role as a bookie who suspects something is up with the lottery and is killed by Dale. Bill Pullman and Daryl Mitchell play the police officers assigned to investigate the bookie's disappearance. Pullman plays Officer Lakewood, a cop who doesn't want to get involved in anything. Mitchell plays his partner, a young and eager cop who does all the work.

Lucky Numbers is relatively entertaining. I'm not into comedies but I didn't think this one was bad. As I've indicated, it's not a mainstream comedy as the situations are a bit too dark. It's sort of like "what else can go wrong?" and you laugh at the bad things that happen to the characters and their relative stupidity. The story does flow smoothly, I didn't notice any plot gaps. The acting is good. John Travolta has played this kind of character before so there's no surprise there. Same for Bill Pullman, Tim Roth, and Ed O'Neill -- all playing the kind characters that they've done before. Lisa Kudrow's character Crystal is a bit different than Phoebe on Friends, in that Crystal is scatterbrained, selfish, and a bit mean instead of scatterbrained, weird and nice.

Recommendation, watch the movie or don't watch the movie? I'd say that Lucky Numbers is not worth going to the theatre to see, but if you are at the theatre and this is the only thing playing, or if you're dragged to see this movie, at least you won't hate it. It's good enough to watch if you're there already, but not good enough to go there to watch.