The young woman at the center of the film is the cutest woman ever. Her name is Sam, and Eva Noblezada voiced her with relentless wit. Sam has moved between foster homes and orphanages all her life, hoping to find her forever family; Now 18, she’s out of the ranks and living alone in a small apartment in her normally quaint town. Not that the script by Kiel Murray, Jonathan Aibel, and Glenn Berger would raise the slightest concern about the inner life of this young woman, but how does Sam feel about the possibility? How do you feel about never accepting it? It’s hard to care about how the story builds her up when we have no idea who she is to begin with.
Living alone is a much more daunting task for Sam than it would be for a normal person, as she suffers from perpetual unhappiness. This is her signature feature. We know this because her sweet new friend at the orphanage, Hazel (Adeline Spon), declares, “You sure are unlucky, Sam Greenfield,” when Sam turns up a makeshift music video shoot (to Madonna’s “Lucky Star,” of course). a fiasco. She is clumsy, things fall off, she gets stuck in the bathroom, she can’t turn on the toaster. Working at the neighborhood craft store (where Lil Rel Howery provides the voice of her boss) offers more opportunities for messiness, but now it’s all about glitter, ribbons, and cacti. Everything is annoyingly predictable.
But regardless of the challenge or setbacks, Sam is sunny and optimistic. It’s also annoyingly predictable. Watching her merrily stumble and stumble her way through life makes you wish she wouldn’t miss out on real feelings every once in a while. Young moviegoers can certainly relate to such volatility.
However, things begin to unravel when an annoying black cat with a glowing shark accidentally takes him through a portal into the Land of Happiness. Similar to the factory “Monsters, Inc.” – Here’s the spark of the rare Lasseter Effect – this is the secret place where leprechauns prepare lucky nuggets for random deliveries around the world: from finding a good parking spot to falling in love. The characters stand around explaining the mechanics of the place to each other scene by scene; You’ll still need a flowchart to understand everything.
–
–
