A few years back, Nora Ephron seemed like one of Hollywood’s rising stars.  She nabbed three Oscar nominations early in her career for penning a Mike Nichols film (Silkwood) and two Meg Ryan films (When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, the latter of which she directed).  But Ephron’s last few projects have practically erased any of the positive memories she created earlier in her career.

First came You’ve Got Mail, the ill-conceived remake of The Shop Around the Corner.  Then Ephron wrote and produced Hanging Up, an irritating film based on an enjoyable book written by her sister Delia.  Now it's Lucky Numbers’ turn to squander A-list stars in a film that could have been a lot better in the right hands.

Numbers is set in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania during the holiday season of 1988.  The film’s main character is Russ Richards (John Travolta, Battlefield Earth), an annoyingly popular television weatherman with his own parking space at his favorite restaurant (Denny’s) for his Jaguar convertible.  Russ makes good money but squanders it on bad business investments.  The latest – a snowmobile dealership – is struggling because of unseasonably warm weather.  When the film opens, we see the game-show-host wannabe served with foreclosure papers on his huge suburban home.

When his boss (Ed O'Neill, The Bone Collector) refuses to give him an advance, Russ turns to Gig (Tim Roth, The Legend of 1900), a strip club owner who suggests the beleaguered personality fix the Pennsylvania State Lottery, which picks its numbers from Russ’ television station. To do so, he must enlist the aid of Crystal Latroy (Lisa Kudrow, Hanging Up), the station’s Vanna White-like Lotto girl, to help pull off the scam.

The first half of Numbers is somewhat promising and well-paced, but the second half really comes apart at the seams.  There is so much backstabbing and double-crossing, it's hard to tell up from down.  This is complicated by the fact that there isn’t one sympathetic character in the film, so the aforementioned backstabbing and double-crossing has little effect. Even worse is a worthless subplot involving a lazy cop (Bill Pullman, Brokedown Palace) who may or may not be hot on the trail of Russ and Crystal.

Travolta looks frightening, even sans the Battlefield Earth makeup and hair.  If you saw him playing a foppish vampire on Saturday Night Live, you might not be able to shake the image from your head during Numbers.  He has the same creepy haircut.  Watching Travolta and Roth opposite each other in several scenes makes it clear that one is a terrific actor, and the other is just calling in the performance.  Kudrow, who always seemed to be the smartest member of Friends (The Opposite of Sex, Clockwatchers, Analyze This) until Ephron got a hold of her, shows off her impressive rack throughout the film.  It’s nice to see her play something other than a ditz.

Numbers was written by Adam Resnick, who directed Chris Elliott’s Cabin Boy and co-produced his Get a Life television series.  The film is loosely based on events that occurred on April 24, 1980 at WTAE in Pittsburgh, where an announcer rigged the Daily Numbers drawing.  Numbers even borrows the line "If you've got it, come and get it; if not, better luck tomorrow" from the real-life story, which became known as “The 666 Fix” because of the triple-digit combination of numbers the crooked drawing produced.

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