‘The Luckiest Man in America’ Review: A Game Show Scandal Fuels a Compelling Character Study with an Uncanny Performance by Paul Walter Hauser | TIFF

With the streaming bubble on the verge of collapse and cable in continual freefall, we’re seeing more and more filmmakers making movies about the television of eras past – before the medium became “respectable” among the intelligentsia and before every show was an “eight-hour movie.” Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour, the true story of when a serial killer went on The Dating Game, was one of the high points of the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival (Netflix will release it later this year). Colin and Cameron Cairnes’ Late Night with the Devil, a horror movie about a ‘70s late night talk show host going to desperate lengths for ratings on Halloween, was a breakout indie hit this spring. Everyone at TIFF this year is trying to score tickets for Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, about the premiere broadcast of Saturday Night Live in 1975.

The Luckiest Man in America, directed and co-written by Samir Olivieros, arrives at TIFF without distribution and with less hype than Saturday Night, but makes for another entertaining entry into this trending retro-TV sub-genre. The film stars Paul Walter Hauser as Michael Larson, the contestant who single-handedly broke the game show Press Your Luck in 1984. Lower in stakes than Woman of the Hour or Late Night with the Devil, it still keeps the audience on edge thanks to the fascinating ambiguity of its protagonist.

Michael’s audition for Press Your Luck at the beginning of the movie reveals two seemingly contradictory aspects of his persona: his eccentric enthusiasm feels far too earnest and genuine to be faked (he comes to the audition with homemade pottery of the show’s “Whammy” mascot!), but we also quickly find out he’s a craven liar who can’t be trusted (he pretends he’s someone else to steal their audition slot). Casting director Chuck (Shamier Anderson) thinks he’s bad news, but producer Bill Caruthers (David Straitharn) senses he’ll make great TV. When Michael wins a record-breaking $110,237 ($333,724 in 2024 dollars) against all odds, it sure is great TV for the audience – but maybe less great news for a network not ready to foot the bill.

As someone unfamiliar with the details of the true story beyond having read the film’s summary, each new turn kept shifting my mental calculus on how much to root for or against Michael. A disheveled man driving to the studio in a run-down ice cream truck is arriving with a ton of red flags. He gains sympathy expressing his love for his wife and daughter, but how much can you trust anything he says about them (dealing with complicated family situations is the only thing this has in common with co-writer Maggie Briggs’ previous screenplay, the beautifully depressing Pakistani LGBTQ+ drama Joyland)? We know Michael is willing to cheat and scam his way through things, but are his unprecedented winnings on the show the result of such cheating, or is he just clever enough to notice something nobody else has?

One bit of contemporary relevance in this ‘80s period piece: the Press Your Luck scandal is a case of technology disrupting the ordinary workings of the entertainment business. If the game show premiered today operating in the same manner, there’d be thousands of Michael Larsons on the internet all figuring out the secret to winning big. Michael’s strategy was part cleverness, part obsession, but mostly he’s able to do what he did because of access to the still-new technology of VHS recording. Breaking the game requires a lot less genius when you can freeze-frame.

This material was almost developed into a Bill Murray comedy in the early 2000s, with Howard Franklin directing and Nicolas Cage (!) producing. Olivieros’ interpretation of the story is more a drama than a comedy, and I wonder if bigger laughs could have made this small-scale movie feel like a bigger deal in general. Still, Michael’s eccentricities and the way the film plays with its Hollywood setting provide a fair amount of humor. The movie’s funniest gags involve crossing paths with other productions on the CBS lot, sometimes when characters don’t even realize it.

Casting director Kharmel Cochrane has assembled a wonderful collection of character actors for The Luckiest Man in America, led by Hauser, the guy you want when you need a character actor to be an unconventional leading man. Anderson, Straitharn, and the rest of the actors playing the alternately thrilled and panicking crew keep the backstage arguments engaging, while Walton Goggins brings that Fallout cowboy-actor charm to the Press Your Luck host Peter Tomarken. Maisie Williams gets her first big-screen appearance in four years as an anxious studio worker in charge of wrangling the contestants and trying to keep Michael in line, while Patti Harrison and Johnny Knoxville have brief but fun appearances as a makeup artist and talk show host respectively.

The Luckiest Man in America doesn’t tell you what to think about its stranger-than-fiction story, instead letting the viewer take whatever they want from it. The film’s main action ends on a freeze-frame, and while the credits employ the standard biopic technique of showing real-life footage of the main characters (all the better to appreciate Hauser’s uncanny resemblance to the real Michael Larson), it notably avoids the other go-to move of including title cards to tell what happened to the characters after the story ends, allowing its uncertainties to linger. It’s not an exceptional film – Woman of the Hour is much more gripping as far as this subgenre goes –  but it’s an enjoyable one.

Rating: B

This review is from the Toronto International Film Festival. There is currently no U.S. distribution.