Rebecca Hall plays Beth, a flighty girl whose greatest ambition in life is to be a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas – where she meets charming, volatile book-maker Dink (Willis). Dink takes her under his wing, grooms her and introduces her to other denizens of the sports gambling community, including the remarkably slimy Rosie. Soon, Beth discovers that she has a head for numbers and eyes for Dink – a fact that greatly upsets his jealous wife Tulip (Zeta-Jones).
If Lay The Favourite had chosen a genre and stuck with it, it might have been a better film. Instead, it meanders between being a limp romantic comedy and a gambling movie, and winds up being mediocre on both counts. The blooming affection between Beth and Dink feels rather fake, and the characters only settle down into being real people in the second half, when Beth tries to strike out on her own.
At least there`s a little fun to be had with the performances in the film. Anyone who`s seen Hall in another movie would be impressed by her seamless transformation into the bubbly, incredibly self-centred Beth – everyone else might just find her plain annoying. Willis doesn`t seem to be working too hard, but he radiates enough charm to keep his scenes interesting. Zeta-Jones probably comes off the best of the three, finding reservoirs of pain, hurt and insecurity in a supporting role that could easily have been a write-off for an actress of her calibre.
Perhaps the best way to approach Lay The Favourite is to treat it as a biopic of Beth Raymer, whose memoir serves as the basis of the film. It would be a little less frustrating, then, to follow her misadventures as she constantly stumbles, falls and picks herself up again. Otherwise, it would be too easy to spend much of the movie trying to puzzle out just what it`s trying (and failing) to be.
Basically: Don`t bet on this movie to win – not when it barely knows what it wants to be.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Shawne Wang