Lucky Luke (2009) - film review

The man who can shoot faster than his shadow, Lucky Luke is charged with restoring order to Daisy Town, the place where he was born.  Once a law-abiding community, Daisy Town is now ruled by bandits and sharpshooters, like Pat Poker, Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane and Jesse James.  Lucky Luke hasn’t yet killed a man but how can he bring justice to his home town and protect Belle, the saloon singer he has fallen for, without giving his enemies a taste of lead?

Morris and René Goscinny must be spinning in their graves...  Just what did James Huth think he was doing?  The film may be titled Lucky Luke but it bears scant resemblance to the popular comic book creation beloved by French-speaking children and adults alike.  Completely lacking in charm and coherence, Huth’s grotesquely self-indulgent, humourless comedy western alienates its audience right from the very first scene - an heretical attempt to give the hero a back story that means for the rest of the film he is a haunted neurotic, not the insouciant and amiable good guy we all know and love.  Jean Dujardin, great actor though he is, is woefully miscast - his Lucky Luke has absolutely nothing in common with Morris and Goscinny’s creation and often comes across as a sad wreck of a man, unengaging, moody and frequently annoying.  Heaven alone knows why actors of the calibre of Melvil Poupaud and Sylvie Testud signed up to appear in this lumbering cinematic monstrosity, which is suitable neither for children (on account of its gratuitous violence) nor adults (on account of its gratuitous brain-frizzling inanity).  Ill-conceived, and poorly executed, the film could not have been more unsympathetic to the original BDs, which are infinitely superior to this trash.

© Peter Delaney (London, UK) 2012

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Great movie! Jean Dujardin was perfect for the part. Everything was just a little bit different and a little bit out of the ordinary. Surreal like a Salvador Dali or di Chiricho painting.  The architecture was so suiting for the twisted bloodthirsty mentality of the Old West.  I laughed at Michael Youn’s new role as Billy the Kid and his revolver belt.

When I lived in Texas, I was robbed at gunpoint by two women and a man hiding under a blanket in the back seat of a Firebird convertible, I was jumped by a pack of teens, I was in a number of fist fights, I leaped off of a cliff in Austin into a rushing river that I found completely dry a number of years later, I stayed in a hotel room without locks on the door in a colorful Mexican boarder town, drove over 100 MPH into Houston on a Motorcycle, I even jumped out of De Havilland airplanes with parachutes and was stranded on the prairie more than once but none of the adventures were nearly as exciting as this James Huth film classic.  Ha Ha! The movie was fun. it brought back a lot of old memories of a time long gone.

So what does Lucky Luke really say? What does it all mean? I will let you decide.  I saw the film last year on a jet to Paris. I watched the movie again on my return flight on one of those new big double-decker jets. I have only seen blue ray versions for sale here in NY on the Internet.  Where can I get a DVD with US region 1 format?

Steven Vilardi (East Rockaway, NY USA) 

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