The Luck of the Irish

(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from The Luck of the Irish)

Doug (vo): Luck of the Irish is just my kind of silly. It's low-budget, corny, knows it, and has a ton of fun with it.

Story
Doug (vo): The story centers around a boy named Kyle, who seems to be the luckiest kid in school. He always finds money, he makes the finishing shot of the basketball team, everyone can't believe how things always go his way. But one day at an Irish festival, his lucky medallion is stolen, and suddenly, all his luck seems to be disappearing. But not only that, a lot of other strange stuff is going on. His mother starts to talk with an accent, he's getting shorter, there's little points on his ears growing, his hair's turning red, and on top of all of that, his parents refuse to tell him about his heritage. As you can guess, Kyle discovers that he's half-leprechaun, and the medallion that was around his neck is actually magic that was keeping him human the whole time. So the search is on to see who stole the medallion, maybe one of the kids or his angry grandfather or who knows?

Review
Doug (vo): On the surface, it doesn't seem like there's a ton you can really do with this story, but they seem to take advantage of it pretty well. Not only is there a fair amount of Irish lore, though I don't know how exactly authentic it is, but the writing has some good lines and clever ideas, and the actors all have good comedic timing. So many of these lines could easily crash and burn, but these actors are really trying and doing a good job making a lot of these jokes hit.

(One supporting character, Seamus (Timothy Omundson), is shown briefly)

Doug (vo): I mean, come on. They were smart enough to cast Lassie from Psych in there. They must know what they're doing. The film doesn't go quite as far as an idea like this should probably allow, I mean, it would be nice to see more leprechauns, more of the fantasy world and so forth, but for the most part, they just keep it in the real world.

(Several of the film's effects are shown in several clips)

Doug (vo): There's only one part where they actually travel, and even then, it's at night and kind of hard to see. But I get the feeling this was kind of on a low budget, and, honestly, for the budget they have, some of these effects are pretty good. This is 2001, and for a Disney Channel TV movie to have effects that look this good is actually kind of impressive. I should also comment that I like the way the movie is shot. I mean, it's not amazing, it doesn't try to show off or anything, but a lot of the shots always have a little bit of motion or an angle or a visual style to it. Again, it's nothing visually breathtaking, but you can tell they're constantly trying to say, "How can we make this shot look a little bit more interesting than just doing a medium shot or a straight-on shot?" They do have fun with those close-ups and tilted angles, but they never go too far to where it's distracting either.

(Several scenes showing the film's third act are shown)

Doug (vo): If I did have a problem, it's that the last third slows down a little bit. You almost think the climax is gonna happen in this once place, and then suddenly, it changes to a basketball game and...yeah, it's a basketball game. It's not like there's a ton of laughs you can get there. I mean, they try, but...you know how these Disney movies go. They want to look cool during the basketball game, not exactly get a lot of laughs. But it more than makes up for it with some out-of-the-box thinking. For example, there's a scene where they're trying to find some thieves that stole a bunch of gold. They see a rainbow, and obviously they say, "It must be at the end of that!" Yeah, it doesn't work the way you think where a rainbow lands and gold is just gonna appear, the gold is already there, and the rainbow follows that. That's kind of clever thinking.

Final thought
Doug (vo): The movie is full of nice little touches like that that aren't exactly knee-slappers, but still get a chuckle. Add on top of that actors that are legitimately charming, I enjoy watching, plus a story and direction that didn't have much to work with, but still did its best and kept my interest. I think this is a cute little adventure. Put on your green hats or whatever other Irish stereotypes you're fond of and dance your way in for a viewing.

(A scene showing a group of Irish dancers finishing a performance is shown)