Like poker? Lucky you. If not, you may want to sit out this extended life-as-a-cardgame metaphor which, like the majority of its characters, spends way too much time at the table.

It’s a disappointment from Hanson, who spoils a winning straight of different but strongly characterised films that peaked with the Oscar-winning LA Confidential in 1997 but dates back to 1990’s Bad Influence and includes Wonder Boys, 8 Mile and In Her Shoes.

Lucky You deals a disappointingly familiar suit of protagonists, comprising the errant father, the morally wayward son and the good gal who’s a-gonna show him the light.

In cards, as in life, Huck Cheever (Bana) maintains a distance from other people.

Nobody questions his card smarts, but his impetuous streak makes him a bit player around the Vegas casinos.

He’s tired of living in the shadow of his poker champ daddy L.C. (Duvall - nice hairpiece) and wants to pay the old coot back for neglecting his now-dead wife and leading his kid down the same soulless path.

Intending to prove himself at poker’s mega-purse World Series, Huck struggles to rustle up the ten-grand entry fee. At least he has the moral backing of sweet songbird Billie Offer (Barrymore in patented cute-puppy mode). B.Offer by name and boff ‘er he does.

Inevitably, his cynicism clashes with her naivity (following a daft against-the-clock bet on a round of golf). It’s one of umpteen life lessons Huck learns on his rocky journey to the climactic competition.

As Hanson and fellow Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Munich) pile on the platitudes in spades (and clubs, hearts and diamonds), it sounds like the entire script came out of a fortune cookie.

Duvall strives manfully to turn his scurvy knave into a king, but Bana’s Huck isn’t brooding enough to put his destiny in any doubt.

Other roles with potential are also squandered. Robert Downey Jr vanishes after one scene as a phone-scammer, Charles Martin Smith’s ‘villain’ is A-Team standard, and more could have been made of the guy who’ll do anything to win a bet (like getting breast implants).

Scorsese’s The Color Of Money played an almost identical game, only much better. Taking few gambles and with no aces in the hole, Lucky You is as memorable as a game of snap.

Elliott Noble