‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ evaluation: Mila Kunis in a messy adaptation of Jessica Knoll’s #MeToo novel

USA Prime Time
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“Luckiest Girl Alive” has lots occurring, in a means that undermines the film’s translation from e-book to display. Mila Kunis produces and stars on this #MeToo-tinged story, which awkwardly incorporates a mass college taking pictures in addition to gender and sophistication politics into what turns into an ungainly mixture of hot-button points in a single dramatic bundle.

Kunis performs Ani FaNelli, a have-it-all journal journalist near touchdown her dream job on the USA Prime Time and marrying her rich boyfriend Luke (Finn Wittrock), though there’s stress over whether or not her skilled aspirations should take a again seat to his higher-paying profession.

A documentarian, nonetheless, is once more asking thorny questions concerning the college taking pictures that occurred when Ani was attending the celebrated Brentley School, bringing recollections flooding again concerning the sexual assault she skilled there, on the time receiving little assist from her social-climbing mom (Connie Britton, diminished to a caricature).

Chiara Aurelia portrays the younger Ani, whose ordeal is graphically proven throughout the regular stream of flashbacks that assail her older self. Those unflinching sequences recall “13 Reasons Why,” one other Netflix manufacturing constructed round a high-school rape and pressures on a teen woman to stay silent.

Here, the dilemma about what to say resurfaces for the grownup Ani, particularly with one among her attackers having achieved a measure of fame, and concern that talking out will one way or the other derail the yellow-brick street to high-society life that looms forward of her. As the handsomely clueless Luke places it, why deal with “this factor that occurred to you so way back.”

As constructed, sadly, in an adaptation of the e-book written by its writer, Jessica Knoll, and directed by Mike Barker, “Luckiest Girl Alive” feels as if it’s juggling too many plates – becoming a member of the story in progress and laboring to attach the mass taking pictures to Ani’s story in a means that muddles the thriller. The lack of perception concerning the true-crime style that helps drive the narrative – that’s, the documentary inside the film – additionally represents a missed alternative.

While Kunis and Aurelia convey Ani’s anguish, there’s a stick-figure high quality to the supporting gamers, a roster that features Jennifer Beals as her hard-charging editor, excluding a caring instructor (Scoot McNairy) who comes again into Ani’s life.

On its face, the mixture of a high-profile lead, bestselling e-book and provocative subject material sounds just like the kind of system that yields dividends for Netflix, and the film nonetheless may. But “Luckiest Girl Alive” falls wanting its promise, a reminder that, nonetheless ironic the title is meant to be, fortune tends to favor the daring.

“Luckiest Girl Alive” premieres October 7 on Netflix.