Lay the Favorite Blu-ray delivers stunning video and solid audio in this fan-pleasing Blu-ray release
An adventurous young woman gets involved with a group of geeky older men who have found a way to work the sportsbook system in Las Vegas to their advantage.
Lay the Favorite is based on an autobiography of the same title by journalist Beth Raymer that
has been published with several different subtitles, including "A Memoir of Gambling" and "A
Story of Gamblers". An intertitle at the beginning of the film states that "As luck would have it,
the following story is true." The main character, played by Rebecca Hall, is named "Beth
Raymer". Despite the usual legal disclaimer at the end of the credits about incidents and dialogue
being fictionalized for dramatic purposes, we're meant to accept the story as fact.
That might be easier to do if the film used unknown faces instead of being stuffed with familiar
actors, including several bona fide movie stars in the persons of Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Vince Vaughn. The director, Stephen Frears,
has plenty of experience working with
famous names in films that include Dangerous
Liaisons, The Grifters and The Queen, but here
the material wilts under the wattage of A-listers trying to "stretch" while taking a break from the
industry grind in a quirky independent project.
On a whim, and with the support of her equally flaky father (Corbin Bernsen), Beth leaves her
Florida home, where she's barely been earning a living as an "outcalls only" stripper, to try her
fortune as a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas. Having apparently done no research, she's shocked to
discover that Vegas is a union town. On the advice of a new acquaintance, Holly (Laura Prepon),
Beth applies for a job with Dink Heimowitz (Willis) of Dink, Inc., a sports gambling operation.
Though initially flustered by the chaos of Dink's operation, which looks and sounds like the floor
of the New York Stock Exchange in miniature, Beth finds herself buzzed from the adrenaline. It
turns out that Beth has a good head for figures. She and Dink take a liking to each other. Beth is
hooked.
The bulk of the film follows Beth as she meanders from one adventure to another in the world of
professional gambling. She gets advice, money and appreciation from Dink when he's winning,
tantrums and abuse when he's not. From Dink's wife, Tulip (Zeta-Jones), she gets jealousy, claw
marks and, eventually, a Tulip-mandated discharge, at which point she finds herself a too-good-to-be-true journalist boyfriend from New York named
Jeremy (Fringe's Joshua Jackson).
After some false starts, Beth winds up in New York working for a fast-talking bookie named
Rosie (Vaughn, with bad hair and a credible Long Island accent), who is the one guy Dink
warned her to avoid. Rosie is sufficiently impressed that he puts Beth in charge of his new
offshore facility in Curaçao (yes, the Caribbean island), where bookmaking is legal, but Beth is
already feeling her life spiraling out of control. When one of her clients, Greenberg (John Carroll
Lynch), threatens her with legal trouble after he sustains a big loss, Beth has to seek help from
the mentor who first got her started in the business.
Frears knows how to set up a scene and keep the action moving, and the actors do what they can
with their parts, especially Hall, who is almost unrecognizable from her more traditional
characters in The Town and Vicky Christina Barcelona. Her kewpie-voice Beth
walks a fine line
between empty-headed ditz and smart cookie. The film's essential problem is the script by D.V.
DeVincentis (who wrote the screenplay for Frears's High
Fidelity), which doesn't have a clear
point of view. If Lay the Favorite wants to educate us about the mechanics of professional sports
gambling, as Martin Scorsese taught us about the operations of Vegas in Casino, it's far too
cursory. If it wants to show us the seductions and perils of gambling as an addiction, its tone is
far too light-hearted and no one suffers any serious consequences, although Laura Prepon's Holly
comes close.
Indeed, a number of the deleted scenes suggest that Holly originally had a larger role. With her
deep voice, worldly tone and resigned demeanor, Holly would have been the ideal character
through which to view the darker side of easy come, easy go. A movie about Holly would have
made for a grittier, more engaging and more memorable experience than Lay the Favorite.
Lay the Favorite was shot by Michael McDonough, the talented cinematographer of such digital
works as Winter's Bone and Albert Nobbs. According to IMDb, the film was shot with the Sony
CineAlta F35, which is consistent with the final product after post-production on a digital
intermediate. Anchor Bay's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray offers a clean, sharp, colorful image
without noise or artifacts, which does a nice job of capturing the daily life of Vegas without
overemphasizing the glitz and glamor of which, at least as told in the film, Beth Raymer saw
very little. The film's palette becomes somewhat darker and more monochromatic for the New
York scenes, but otherwise the cinematography is not overtly stylized. The photography is
naturalistic, and that's what the Blu-ray delivers.
The best parts of Lay the Favorite's DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack are those conveying a
cacophony of voices shouting over each other, usually in Dink, Inc.'s offices. The mix effectively
separates the individual voices so that they criss-cross, without dissolving into aural mush.
Otherwise, the sound mix is functional and unremarkable, with little for the surrounds to do
except provide a general sense of ambiance and add depth to the serviceable score by James
Seymour Brett (Planet 51).
Since Lay the Favorite was acquired for distribution by the Weinstein Company, it has been
released by Anchor Bay in TWC's usual format, i.e., mastered with BD-Java but with the
omission of bookmarking capabilities. Someday they'll learn.
Deleted Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 7:41): It's not hard to imagine any or all of these scenes
being included, although collectively they probably would have damaged the film's pacing.
Outside Darren's House
Beth & Holly at the Café
Best Job Ever
What're You Doing?
Don't Get Old
Beth Phones Dad
New York Is Hot
Beth & Jeremy
Beth Calls Rosie
Beth Visits Doctor
Dink's Voicemail
Additional Trailers: The film's trailer is not included. At startup, the disc plays trailers
for The Details, Bachelorette and Butter. These can be skipped with the chapter forward
button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.
Lay the Favorite is a pleasant diversion, but it doesn't add up to much. Its cast and director are
good enough to make the experience mildly entertaining, but it evaporates as soon as the credits
roll. Unless you're a Bruce Willis completist or have a crush on Rebecca Hall, a rental is all I'd
suggest.
Anchor Bay Entertainment and RADiUS-TWC have announced the Blu-ray release of director Stephen Frears' Lay the Favorite. The film features an all-star lineup that includes Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rebecca Hall and Joshua Jackson, and heads to retail ...
