Apple TV+ film 'Luck' takes over Apple's homepage

AppleInsider

As animated comedy "Luck" starts streaming on Apple TV+, the film is being promoted with characters tumbling down around the regular iPads, iPhones and Macs.

Apple annually changes its homepage to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, in January. Other than that, though, it's rare for the company to change from its usual presenting of Apple devices to buy.

"Ted Lasso" got the honor for its second season premiere on Apple TV+, and Apple Arcade has had the same treatment.

Now the new animated comedy "Luck" appears at first to get the top banner area of the site -- and then is revealed to have taken over everything. The top banner shows Bob, the cat, opening a portal to the Land of Luck.

Bob then jumps into the portal -- and comes out down below, along with Sam Greenfield (Eva Noblezada), crashing in to Apple's regular iPad Pro section. Further down the page, other characters are trapped in a MacBook Pro, or are standing on each other's shoulders trying to reach a different section of the page.

"Luck" is written by Kiel Murray, Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger. It's directed by Peggy Holmes, and includes Simon Pegg, Jane Fonda, and Whoopi Goldberg.

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apple4thewin

Doesn’t seem to work in iPhone safari.

Muzgash69

I'll give hard pass after reading a review. The head of Skydance not withstanding. Some poor animations and a so-so story can leave you why you wasted your time from what I read.

tmay

Muzgash69 said:

I'll give hard pass after reading a review. The head of Skydance not withstanding. Some poor animations and a so-so story can leave you why you wasted your time from what I read.

Gee, for your first post, a recommendation without actually watching the animation, and no links to actual reviews.

Pretty minimal effort on your part.

The intended audience, children, will find it entertaining enough. I'm half way through it, and it certainly isn't up to Disney, or Pixar standards, but it isn't awful. Rotten Tomatoes is 50% Critics, 70% audience.

Kudos to Skydance Animation for entering the competition with its first entry. Given the rapid growth of this division, I would expect to see a higher quality release sometime around 2025.

get serious

True enough Tmay. Not terrible. Has a worthy moral.
1000% better than any John Wick, National Treasure or Fast/Furious slop.

CheeseFreeze

This was an uninspired movie that really missed

the mark. Maybe children would enjoy the CGI, but it just seems that someone tried to write an

algorithm that picked the best parts out of kids

movies in the last decade, and then Frankenstein

them together here. Sadly disappointed.

This echoes my feeling with Apple’s TV service as a whole; I see the business behind it - the executives, the data analytics, but no true company film DNA and love for cinema and TV content. 

Marvin

tmay said:

Muzgash69 said:

I'll give hard pass after reading a review. The head of Skydance not withstanding. Some poor animations and a so-so story can leave you why you wasted your time from what I read.

The intended audience, children, will find it entertaining enough. I'm half way through it, and it certainly isn't up to Disney, or Pixar standards, but it isn't awful. Rotten Tomatoes is 50% Critics, 70% audience.

The critic rating is also brought down because of people like this:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/luck-review-a-limp-leprechaun-adventure-that-looks-like-pixar-lite-6gn97k206

"The formerly disgraced Pixar boss John Lasseter, who left the company after acknowledging allegations of workplace sexual misconduct, is back, as head of Skydance Animation, with a new film." 2/5

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/luck-movie-review-2022

"The ironically titled “Luck” marks the inauspicious return of John Lasseter, the former Pixar Animation chief who was ousted in 2017 from the company he co-founded over allegations of inappropriate workplace behavior. Now he’s back at Skydance Animation, serving as head of animation and a producer on “Luck,” which is streaming on Apple TV+.

But you don’t need to know any of that to realize this movie is a mess, and one of the worst of the year." 1/4

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/stuff-to-watch/300651811/luck-apples-fun-but-forgettable-family-flick-cant-escape-the-spectre-of-pixar

"Infamous as the project that Emma Thompson walked out on after she objected to the controversial John Lasseter being hired by Skydance Animation, this fun, but forgettable family flick never quite manages to escape the spectre of the latter’s former employers." 2.5/5

The reviewer giving 1/4 is clearly trying to bring down the average rating. For a professional movie critic, this should be something that results in her reviews being discarded. This kind of thing has been happening far too often with Rotten Tomatoes reviews in recent years and their critic reviews are barely even worth having at all now. If the critic rating and audience rating skew so much, the critic rating isn't fit for purpose. Their job is to recommend movies for typical viewers. If their reviews don't reflect the typical audience, they should be replaced with reviewers that align more closely with the audience or weighted to reflect that.

This movie was pretty good, it had a lot of Pixar feel to it. It wasn't at the level of Toy Story 4 but easily better than Luca, Soul and Onward. The sound design was really good (Skywalker Sound). Budget was apparently $140m.

The popular animated movies have more well-developed characters. These are characters that work as toys. Not many characters in this movie would be able to translate to popular toys. To get more well-defined characters, they don't have to use anthropomorphic animals. Most of the characters in Frozen and Incredibles are human but they need to have more standout traits. It would be good if they could come up with an animation franchise like Toy Story, Ice Age, Shrek, Frozen and Minions.

arlor

Marvin said:

The reviewer giving 1/4 is clearly trying to bring down the average rating. For a professional movie critic, this should be something that results in her reviews being discarded. This kind of thing has been happening far too often with Rotten Tomatoes reviews in recent years and their critic reviews are barely even worth having at all now. If the critic rating and audience rating skew so much, the critic rating isn't fit for purpose. Their job is to recommend movies for typical viewers. If their reviews don't reflect the typical audience, they should be replaced with reviewers that align more closely with the audience or weighted to reflect that.

I've been reading movie reviews in a variety of publications, including some Hollywood trade journals, for a good 35 years now, and I'm pretty sure the Platonic ideal you're proposing of reviews that only address what's on the screen and not the circumstances of production and casting either doesn't exist or barely exists. I doubt that Rotten Tomatoes and other sites have the staff or preparation to separate the wheat from the chaff. The critics themselves would no doubt contest the view that their judgment was affected by the movie's staffing: they would say that's just a hook to tie into other news readers will have heard about the production. 

Just to be clear, I haven't seen this movie, so I'm not expressing an opinion on whether it's good or bad. 

eta: Those audience ratings that you want to compare to are also notoriously problematic.