Lay the Favorite Reviews

While everything seems to be going in its favor, Lay The Favorite is a losing bet.

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A shrug of a film featuring unremarkable characters in an unremarkable story that never does more than limp toward it flat and flimsy third act.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

... offers little insight into its subject or its setting and feels like it's been chopped up in the editing room.

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Poor Rebecca Hall. If someone had told her there was no hope for Lay the Favorite, she could have saved some energy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.4/10

This shaggy-dog story based on the improbable real-life adventures of exotic dancer-turned-bookie-turned-journalist Beth Raymer is never quite as amusing as it thinks it is, despite a charming performance by Rebecca Hall.

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Frears has a lot of fun with the bad tempers and high spirits of this crew of adrenaline junkies, and though the story falls a little flat, the script is sprinkled with dry wit.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

"Lay the Favorite" is a small and not particularly ambitious movie, but it's pleasing and exceptionally well made.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

What has happened to director Stephen Frears?

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

Best to say as little as possible, cut one's losses and move on.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5

The dots are there, but they don't connect.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

A listless comedy built around a vivacious protagonist.

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Hall works like mad to create this character, giving her a breathy voice and hair-twisting tics and wide-eyed expressions that, rather than rounding her out, only flatten her.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

What little plot "Lay the Favorite" has is lost in a mess of a screenplay that does absolutely nothing to stand out in any way whatsoever.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4

Hollywood celebrities romping around in a candy-colored Alexa-shot criminal underworld, pretty much as a means of passing time.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

Incoherent, loud and saddled with a lead character far less smart ... 'Lay the Favorite' simply lays down dead.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

A wan comedy about gambling that takes no risks ...

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This is one bugged-out burlesque you can easily close the iron door on.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

As forgettable a motion picture as can be found during the 2012 holiday season.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Just kind of, well, lays there. Or lies there. It matters to those of us who value the English language, but not to many others. Like this film.

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Frears locks into survival mode to carry on through the cinematic disorganization, resembling a man who knows he's bet on the wrong horse.

Full Review | Original Score: C-