Worst Gambling Movies #22 (Lay the Favorite)
My series, “Worst Gambling Movies of All Time” continues with #22 — “Lay the Favorite” which is about a veteran Las Vegas sports gambler who teaches a young female protege his trade secrets.
Title and Year: Lay the Favorite (2012)
Director: Stephen Frears
Actors: Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rebecca Hall
Synopsis: A bimbo quits her job as a stripper and moves to Las Vegas and becomes a professional sports bettor with the help of a scumbag.
Lay the Favorite is an atrocious movie, and that’s putting it kindly.
The premise is so unbelievable, the performances so sterile, and the plot so utterly imbecilic that the only suspense remaining is whether any living, breathing human being with functioning brain tissue can make it all the way through such a grueling 117 minutes of slumber.
Billed as a comedy, every joke bombs. The film is so awful, it makes us want to go back and root for Hans Gruber. Killing off Bruce Willis in the first scene of Die Hard might have spared us his many later shit pellets of the silver screen.
As for the director Stephen Frears, did he really also make Dangerous Liaisons and The Queen? Might want to draw a DNA sample and double-check the results.
Purportedly based on a book recounting a true story (yet, no one I know has ever heard of this story or the people in it despite knowing just about everyone involved in sports gambling on the Las Vegas scene over the past 20 years), there’s virtually nothing in this film that can be construed as plausible, let alone true as to the way professional sports gambling is portrayed.
Nonetheless, Lay the Favorite was memorable in at least one dubious regard. This film may have set box office records for a negative return on investment. Check out these published figures on the IMDB page:
Box Office Figures:
Budget: $26,350,000 (estimated)
Opening Weekend USA: $20,998 (9 December 2012)
Gross USA: $20,998
Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $1,577,272
Wow! A $26 million budget and it earned 20 grand! Impressive, for all the wrong reasons.! Seems that any movie would make at least that figure based simply on the fact some moviegoers unknowingly announce the wrong movie when they buy a ticket. An empty theater presumably could make $20,998 nationally just from lazy ticket tellers punching the wrong button. Really — that’s stunning when you think about it. Studio executives who green-lit this catastrophe deserve some kind of award if they’re still working in Hollywood.
A personal note: While this movie was being filmed at Caesars Palace in the sportsbook area over a busy weekend in the evening hours in order to capture the authenticity of live sports gambling, I saw a few scenes being shot (I was working a WSOP Circuit event in the poker room, adjacent to the sportsbook area). I recall my own excitement knowing that a movie was being filmed on location about sports gambling based on actual events (it claims). But when I saw this movie later (on demand) because it didn’t last a week in theaters, I wondered if it was the same movie.
Rotten Tomatoes gave this movie a score of 18. To put that into some perspective, the same site gives Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) a score of 22. So, if given a choice, pick Santa vs. the aliens.
Here’s the official trailer. Even the 90-second sizzle wheel is a bore:
Worst Gambling Movies
i can verify these people do actually exist. the book by the same name actually isn’t half bad especially if you know dinky. that said, having bruce willis play him would be akin to having brad pitt play nolan. it’s a tough sell
Somewhat surprised you’ve never heard of Dinky. He does seem to mostly bet hockey and horses so you may not know him.
He’s in a documentary with Alan Boston and a few others. He along with Alan seem to be of the few that know what there doing. It’s called, The Best of It, and it’s on Amazon Prime for free if you have it.
The documentary isn’t bad and worth watching. 100% agree on this movie being atrocious.
NOLAN REPLIES:
Thanks, John. I appreciate the added perspective.
— ND