A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

There was something very special in the chemistry between French actors Gerard Depardieu and Pierre Richard that was lacking in the Martin Short, Danny Glover comedy team. In fact, the trio of comedy films that Depardieu and Richard did together was quite funny: Les Comperes, Les Fugitifs, and La Chevre. Each of those films was re-made by Hollywood (Father's Day, Three Fugitives, and Pure Luck) but each unfortunately fell short of the hilarious originals. The original Depardieu character in La Chevre was an impatient take-charge man who always had to exercise self-control in the presence of the guy with bad luck, knowing all the while that he was really the professional private eye and the competent one and forced to play along with the Richard character's self-delusions about his own investigative prowess. Depardieu was the rational Cartesian man who didn't believe in good or bad luck and you had the constant feeling he was about to boil over as the Pierre Richard character continually proved him wrong. I felt there was a more dramatic turnaround in this character's eventual dumbstruck realization that good and bad luck existed in the original comedy. His wide-eyed disbelief at the end when they found the missing girl was an emotional high-point in the original, whereas the American version wasn't nearly as moving. I didn't feel the mounting sense of frustration and aggravation from the Danny Glove character, who played it a little too coolly, in my opinion. Also, Pierre Richard's character in the original approached every incident of bad luck with the same comic serene self-confidence as though it were something completely normal. I didn't get this sense of Barney Fife nerdish swagger as the man who thought he was in charge of the mission from the Martin Short character. Above all, I didn't see the same degree of conflict between the two characters that ended in true affection in the re-make as I saw in the original. They were too nice to each other throughout the film. In the original, the Pierre Richard character tries to physically attack the Depardieu character in the end, but only succeeds in badly hurting himself. The American version doesn't involve this conflict at the end. The characters in the American version didn't seem to have as firm a grasp on who they were. Nonetheless, the idea of the film is very original (a man with total bad luck is the last resort for finding a missing girl who has identical uniform bad luck) and Pure Luck is a film that is a lot of fun to watch. Even though Danny Glover and Martin Short didn't seem to "get" what the characters in the original film were all about, which made it a true comedy classic, they still pulled off funny performances which made for good if not outstanding comedy.

Martin Short and Danny Glover star in PURE LUCK, and the title plus Short should be a tipoff as to the quality of this obvious tax writeoff. Investigator Glover is assigned to find a missing heiress in Mexico and Short is sent along as someone who shares the heiress' constant state of bad luck (running into doors, falling down, etc.). Somehow this is supposed to mean Short will be able to find the lady, who has been kidnapped. I can't imagine anyone sitting through this inept, unfunny flick in a theater. I couldn't finish it on TV. Short has fallen a long, long way from his INNERSPACE days, and Glover simply looks embarrassed. He also mumbles most of his dialog. PURE LUCK makes THE MAN, with Eugene Levy and Sam Jackson playing similar roles, look like CITIZEN KANE. It is fair to say Short's auburn-dyed, permed hairdo in PURE LUCK outperforms Short at every turn. Avoid at all costs.

Though this movie is still watchable, it doesn't even come near the brilliance of the original. For starters: 1981 was a defining year in french popular-cinema. That was the year when "Le Professionnel" and "La Chévre" was released. "Pure Luck" is an American remake of the second one, made ten years later. I sometimes really hate way American film-making works: when they got so tired of their own clichés, they do a remake of a foreign film, which has foreign clichés. That was the element that made these two french movies great. European clichés. When they made those movies, they were totally aware, that they are only using the old recipes, which already worked well. The french humor in La Chévre is hilarious, and goofy. The scenery gives you a nostalgic feel, and the actors are just plain brilliant. Never over-acting, just plain funny. The strong, and aggressive Depardieu, and the always unlucky Richard made an unforgettable duo. NOW this movie... It doesn't have ANY of the elements listed above. Danny Glover and Martin Short are raging idiots, screaming through cities and jungles, acting so bad, it makes even your average stand up comedy actor look pretty sharp. The story is the same, almost word-by-word, yet the jokes don't work. Okay, I am a bit too hard on this one, but the original La Chévre was a generational masterpiece. And this is not. Just an average American early nineties comedy, with not too many things to remember for. Not that bad, but hey, if you take time to dig up this one, search for the original instead!!!

The original French version "La Chevre" ('the goat', in France a symbol of bad luck), with Pierre Richard and Gerard Depardieu, is much funnier, but I too agree that Martin Short is a great comedian and that this movie works not bad. Anyway I'm sure that a couple like Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor would have do a much better job. Wilder also worked in an adaptation of another funny and successful French movie: "The Woman in Red", and it turned into a little masterpiece... For Martin Short "Pure Luck" was the second "French" adaptation after "Three Fugitives" from 1989 with Nick Nolte (in France the original movie starred again the duo Richard-Depardieu).