Lucky Break

To call this romantic comedy lame would be in poor taste but it's difficult to avoid metaphoric expressions such as "limps along" or "drags its feet" to describe the painfully slow and not all comedic unfolding of the romance between Sophie and Eddie (played by Gia Carides and Anthony LaPaglia, who would later marry in real life).

Carides plays a 30-ish woman handicapped since childhood by polio who to escape her lot writes erotic short stories. She not only does this in Victoria's State Library but speaks her text aloud. This is how Eddie encounters her, and not realizing that she is handicapped, tries to make a date. Clearly with US sales in mind, Lewin throws in a sub-plot about hot jewelry that allows him to have some guns waved around in typical cops-and-robbers style whilst LaPaglia's American accent goes unexplained. The main problem with the film, however, is that it is so lacking in spark, most scenes being unnecessarily long and without any pay-off . The script by Lewin is lack-lustre, with, in the absence of any wit, recourse to ham-fisted slapstick gags in a desperate attempt to get a laugh and the intriguing central premise of the relationship between romantic and physical attractiveness being under-developed. 

 

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