Lucky Numbers shares many resemblances with the novel Lucky You, by Carl Hiaasen. The biggest difference however, is that the book is great and the movie really sucks. The book follows a woman who wins a jackpot and the two rednecks who win half of it. The rednecks want to get their hands on the ticket so they can cash in on much more money. I must point out however, that this is NOT an adaptation of the book, merely a movie that resembles it vaguely.<br /><br />Russ Richards (John Travolta) is a big personality in his town. You see, he hosts the weather on the local TV channel. He does it so well that he has his own table at the Denny's. However, Russ isn't quite as good in managing his money as he is at making wisecracks about rain. Russ has dug himself a neat little hole and now he doesn't have any money. So what he decides to do is win the lottery. He and the lotto girl Krystal (Lisa Kudrow) rig the lottery so that their number wins. Their scheme works but they need someone to go and pick up the money. They choose Krystal's asthmatic perverted cousin. However, he gets into a little incident with Krystal and. things degenerate from then on.<br /><br />Lucky Numbers is a sorry, sorry film from the very beginning. The characters are all very, very lame. In a comedy, you usually hate all the characters (as in a black comedy) or you feel sorry for what they're going through. However, Lucky Numbers gives us no sympathetic characters and then wants us to care for them. This is so blatantly annoying that after you've met the cousin, you just don't care anymore. You want the jokes.<br /><br />Ahh, the jokes. Essence of every comedy. The jokes in Lucky Numbers go from blatantly obvious to moderately amusing. Some jokes work, especially those triggered by Bill Pullman's policeman character. A couple of nice wisecracks about TV do get through, but on the most part this is weak.<br /><br />The acting is pretty horrible. John Travolta, fresh off Battlefield Earth, looks like a wax dummy. Lisa Kudrow, is as always, an attraction, but her character is so lame that we don't care about her acting. The supporting cast is great, on paper, but their acting is awful. A bigger waste of Ed O'Neill, Michael Rapaport, Bill Pullman and Colin Mochrie has never occurred. (I list Mochrie because I love Who's Line Is It Anyway? Even though his role consists of two lines.)<br /><br />Behind Lucky Numbers is a very promising plot. However, the execution is horrible. If the movie had focused more on them getting the money instead of them killing each other off for the damn ticket, this movie would've been much better. Even more surprising is that the director, Nora Ephron, wrote the script to movies like Sleepless in Seattle. This failed black comedy fails at almost everything. A real snooze. 3.5/10