Synopsis
A former stripper's talent with numbers lands her a job with a professional gambler who runs a sports book in Las Vegas.
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Cast
- Rebecca HallBeth Raymer
- Bruce WillisDink Heimowitz
- Catherine Zeta-JonesTulip Heimowitz
- Joshua JacksonJeremy
- Laura PreponHolly
- Frank GrilloFrankie
- Wayne PéreScott
- John Carroll LynchDave Greenberg
- Vince VaughnRosie
- Corbin BernsenJerry
Recommendations
- 63
ReelViews
On autopilot from beginning to end, Lay the Favorite feels like sitcom blown up to big-screen proportions. The laughs aren't raucous or numerous, the character development is sketchy at best, and the insider's perspective on bookies and gambling is superficial. - 60
Total Film
A classy cast and Frears' light touch can't help this innocent abroad dramedy into the winner's enclosure. More jeopardy, less laboured larking, and it could've romped home. - 58
The A.V. Club
At best, Lay The Favorite registers as cartoon sociology, but the film's featherweight charms dissipate whenever it moves away from the world of gambling and devotes time to go-nowhere subplots involving Hall's bland romance with Jackson, or Willis' troubled but fundamentally healthy marriage to Zeta-Jones. - 40
Empire
Particularly disappointing given the names involved, it's only mildly amusing at best, and more often downright tedious. - 40
The Guardian
Stephen Frears is a supremely accomplished director, but perhaps there was little he could do with this garbled and unsatisfying story about gambling. - 40
The Hollywood Reporter
The comedy just isn't that funny and the enterprise never finds an exact tone. - 40
Variety
Rebecca Hall's enjoyably bubbly lead performance lends the picture an occasional frisson of amusement. - 40
Time Out
Lay the Favorite is frenzied without being funny. Like Judy Holliday on a particularly manic day, Hall tears from scene to scene with a bubbly effervescence that is technically impressive yet increasingly exhausting.
