Sundance 2012: Lay the Favorite – review

Stephen Frears tends to provoke a polarised response to his work, so it's little surprise that Lay the Favorite, his new feature which premiered in Sundance on Saturday night, is dividing audiences here. At least it's dividing industry attendees – the buyers, producers, marketing executives and journalists who descend on Park City in the annual indie gold rush. Some have called it the worst movie they've seen in the festival while others will admit to a fondness for its insouciant charm.

I'm with the second group. While this is a lesser work in the Frears canon, it's still a likable caper. Sure, it requires considerable suspension of disbelief: the script was adapted from the memoirs of Beth Raymer, a free-spirited hustler-turned-writer who shakes up the lives of everyone she meets. But it works in a cartoonish way and Rebecca Hall as Beth delivers a fabulously ditzy turn that should gain her wider recognition in the US as a leading lady.

The action proper starts in Las Vegas as Beth breezes into town after a demoralising stint as a stripper in her Florida hometown of Tallahassee. She meets a couple of like-minded gals sunbathing on a casino roof and upon their recommendation goes to work for Dink, a kindly sports bettor played with an avuncular sense of indulgence by Bruce Willis. It turns out Beth has a knack for placing bets with offshore bookies and is handy at pay-and-collect, which involves muling large wads of cash to and from other gamblers in town. The job is working out well. They're beating the odds. Beth flirts with Dink and he allows it because she just might be his lucky charm. Then Dink's prickly trophy wife Tulip (Catherine Zeta-Jones) returns from a cruise.

Beth leaves, moves in with a New York journalist, returns to work for Dink in Vegas then heads off to the Caribbean to work for a less scrupulous bookie (Vince Vaughn) whose loose ethics finally invite a semi-believable element of danger to proceedings. This is Beth's cue to become responsible and shield others from possible harm.

The acts and emotions that run through Lay the Favorite are daubed in primary colours: the world painted here is a place where gamblers and Vegas hustlers are portrayed as participants in a raucous game without consequences. Arguments and betrayals are glossed over and there is little to counterbalance the frivolity. Maybe it was truly so in Raymer's life, maybe not, but in capturing this madcap milieu Frears has crafted a diverting place to drop into for 100 minutes. But not much more.