LuckiestGirlAlive Review: Mila Kunis Carries Tepid Adaption Of Intense Story
When Jessica Knoll’s Luckiest Girl Alive debuted in 2015, the novel was favorably compared to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl On The Train. Both books were eventually adapted to film, with Gone Girl becoming a massive hit. Gone Girl’s success at the box office and its positive critical reception launched Flynn into the upper echelon of screenwriters, and it ushered in numerous literary and cinematic projects that dealt with one core theme — complicated women.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY Luckiest Girl Alive follows Ani , a successful 28-year-old magazine writer who seemingly has her life in order and is about to embark on a new adventure — marriage. However, Ani is hiding a secret about her days from high school, where she overcame a series of horrifying events, including a school shooting and a sexual assault.
A film’s quality relies on many parts that must work at a high caliber to achieve excellence. Luckiest Girl Alive doesn’t quite reach that potential despite some heavy lifting from Mila Kunis. It is hard to gauge just how well she does as Ani because the film’s sterile, almost mechanical presentation fails to elevate this project to the heights it aspires to reach. The quality of the script is subpar; it simply and matter-of-factly presents the events of the book.
The way the film engages with Ani’s rage doesn’t manifest on screen in a stirring way despite the character articulating how that rage has steered her in life. Her narration describes her true feelings, and Kunis appropriately displays Ani’s wide gamut of emotions. But the film doesn’t adequately capture the full magnitude of her emotions — it is just stated but never truly felt. That is a problem with both the script and technical work from director Mike Barker.
Luckiest Girl Alive will undoubtedly resonate with audiences craving flawed women who are reckoning with society’s unfair expectations of them. There is also the undeniable pull of Mila Kunis, regardless of the quality of the film she stars in. This film proves that simply replicating events from a novel — about a very impactful story about sexual assault and trauma — won’t translate without consideration of the barriers between literature and cinema.
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