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The importance of parental support goes meta in Julia Hart\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Say Good Luck.\u201d The YA musical drama, which premieres Friday, pays homage to musical theater, unconditional maternal love and the family-hour TV, er, Netflix movie. In a landscape littered with teenage dysfunction, \u201cDon\u2019t Say Good Luck\u201d is a moving argument for aspirational television.<\/p>\n
And with a star whose famous father serves as producer, it\u2018s an admonition to the term \u201cnepo baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
We meet normal kid Sophie Birenbaum (Sunny Sandler) as she anxiously prepares for a day that will include auditioning for her high school\u2019s production of \u201cWaitress.\u201d While her father, Ted (Max Greenfield, marvelously transformed by a beard), wrangles her rambunctious younger twin brothers, her mother, Elizabeth (Melanie Lynskey), assures her that she is talented and beautiful and will do just great. These sentiments are echoed by Sophie\u2019s best friend, Carolyn (Scarlett Estevez), who joins her at the audition where the director is the super-cool Ms. Parker (\u201cBrooklyn Nine-Nine\u2019s\u201d Stephanie Beatriz) and even theater department queen bee Mallory (Elyse Bell), who everyone knows is going to get the lead, is pretty nice.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Odyssey\u2019 meets \u2018Shark Week\u2019 in Amazon Prime Video\u2019s \u2018The Devil\u2019s Mouth\u2019: the ultimate travel horror tale.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a high school experience that\u2019s about as far from \u201cEuphoria\u201d or even \u201cGlee\u201d as one can get while still being situated on Earth. Still, all is not perfect in Sophie\u2019s world. When Elizabeth learns that her cancer has returned, Sophie overhears her parents\u2019 subsequent conversation via a butt-dial from her father\u2019s phone. Her first impulse is to flee the audition; instead her emotional turmoil fuels a powerful performance that (spoiler alert?) lands her the lead role.<\/p>\n
Determined to downplay the seriousness of her illness, Elizabeth insists that life continue on as normal \u2014 she and Ted own a local deli, which offers some nice bagel versus wrap shade and a Jon Lovitz cameo. Though Sophie is worried, she believes her mother who says she will beat cancer again. So she throws herself into the stomach-churning rigor of being the star of the show, which includes a painful separation from her bestie, a crush on her co-star and a struggle to find the confidence to let her obvious talent shine.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t Say Good Luck\u201d is, obviously, a showcase for Sandler, whose parents, Adam and Jackie Sandler, serve as producers (which may have had something to do with the extraordinary supporting cast, which also includes Bebe Neuwirth and Steve Buscemi as Elizabeth\u2019s parents). Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison Productions have a long and lucrative partnership with Netflix, which recently debuted \u201cHappy Gilmore 2\u201d and announced \u201cGrown Ups 3\u201d as part of their deal. One could see this as yet another case of nepo-baby triumph \u2014 streaming is currently littered with the progeny of famous parents \u2014 or simply a living example of the film\u2019s theme. Like the Birenbaum parents, the Sandlers want to help their daughter shine in her chosen career and that she certainly does.<\/p>\n
Though Sophie is the only older daughter ever to escape the task of caring for her younger brothers (or doing any chores at all), Sandler makes her completely believable as a nice, self-conscious kid who just needs a push to trust her talent. If the tone of the film is 1970s-family-comedy aspirational (particularly in the mother-daughter scenes), that shouldn\u2019t be construed as a low level of difficulty.<\/p>\n
Indeed, it is almost revolutionary to see emotionally resonant teenage characters who aren\u2019t mired in abuse, addiction or some kind of horror; leveraging dysfunction has become shorthand for \u201cdrama.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t Say Good Luck\u201d is based on the real-life experience of co-writer Laura Hankin (collaborating here with Hart and Jordan Horowitz), and though the stakes are emotionally high, portraying a loving family doing their best to get through a devastating situation with minimal meltdowns is its own act of bravery.<\/p>\n
It certainly helps that this family is firmly anchored by Lynskey, who proves, yet again, that she can do anything. Her Elizabeth is neither martyr nor saint, just a woman who wants to live as she\u2019s always lived for as long as she can. Lynskey lifts what could have been a sappy (or even worse, guilt-inducing) cancer-mom tale into a quietly transcendent contemplation of motherhood. (A scene in which she flips through the calendar trying to figure out when to let the kids know what\u2019s really going on drove the breath from this mother\u2019s body.)<\/p>\n
Does \u201cDon\u2019t Say Good Luck\u201d skirt around the grim realities of cancer as cavalierly as it paints a Pinterest mood-board vision of high school? Absolutely. But that doesn\u2019t mean the message and the feelings (yes, you absolutely will cry) are not just as authentic. Love is the root of much pain, but it\u2019s also what conquers it in the end.<\/p>\n