The Luckiest Man in America Parent Guide

When it comes to finding contestants for Press Your Luck, the game show he produces, Bill Carruthers (David Strathairn) likes them a little bit crazy. And he’s hit the motherlode of weirdness with bumbling, shaggy-looking Michael Larson (Paul Walter Hauser). Larson’s audition for the show is so awkward, so strange, that the studio’s staff want nothing to do with him. But Carruthers over-rules them, offering Larson a spot on the next day’s program.

Sometimes going with your gut is a very bad idea.

It turns out that Larson is a genius at playing Press Your Luck. As his winnings climb to stratospheric levels, nervous staff try to figure out how to end his lucky streak – by fair means or foul.

The Luckiest Man in America is based on the true story of Michael Larson, a con man and grifter who figured out how to beat the game. The film is tense and tightly written, its ninety-minute runtime zeroing in on Larson’s performance on set and the behind-the-scenes panic. There are some fine performances, with Paul Walter Hauser giving us a Michael Larson who is desperate, determined, and right on the edge of unraveling. David Strathairn also shows us the erosion of Carruthers’ executive persona, as he descends to weaselly back-stabbing to save his own skin.

This movie benefits from its excellent cast and solid visual design. For those of us old enough to remember, the Eighties clothes are particularly fun. But I wish I had enjoyed the show more than I did. The most aggravating part of the movie is the ending – if you want a sense of closure at the end of the film, give this one a miss. I actually went online to find out what happened to the real life Michael Larson, because the show simply leaves us hanging.

Also irksome are the script’s four dozen profanities, three-quarters of which are sexual expletives. The swearing is the only significant negative content in the film, and it drives what would otherwise be a very soft PG-13 film into Restricted territory. This kind of unnecessary negative content is enough to make me bang my head into the wall. I wish that director Samir Oliveros had learned from the success of last year’s Conclave – it’s possible to make a clever PG movie that adults will enjoy. If Hollywood would learn this lesson, we’d all feel luckier.