60
A classy cast and Frears' light touch can't help this innocent abroad dramedy into the winner's enclosure. More jeopardy, less laboured larking, and it could've romped home.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
Particularly disappointing given the names involved, it's only mildly amusing at best, and more often downright tedious.
63
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
On autopilot from beginning to end, Lay the Favorite feels like sitcom blown up to big-screen proportions. The laughs aren't raucous or numerous, the character development is sketchy at best, and the insider's perspective on bookies and gambling is superficial.
40
Rebecca Hall's enjoyably bubbly lead performance lends the picture an occasional frisson of amusement.
40
Lay the Favorite is frenzied without being funny. Like Judy Holliday on a particularly manic day, Hall tears from scene to scene with a bubbly effervescence that is technically impressive yet increasingly exhausting.
30
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
Screeches and scrambles from scene to scene with manic sitcom energy, much like the cherished pet hamster of one of its characters.
58
At best, Lay The Favorite registers as cartoon sociology, but the film's featherweight charms dissipate whenever it moves away from the world of gambling and devotes time to go-nowhere subplots involving Hall's bland romance with Jackson, or Willis' troubled but fundamentally healthy marriage to Zeta-Jones.
40
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Stephen Frears is a supremely accomplished director, but perhaps there was little he could do with this garbled and unsatisfying story about gambling.
25
Slant Magazine by Steve Macfarlane
Hollywood celebrities romping around in a candy-colored Alexa-shot criminal underworld, pretty much as a means of passing time.
40
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
The comedy just isn't that funny and the enterprise never finds an exact tone.