'Luckiest Girl Alive' stars Mila Kunis in a messy adaptation of Jessica Knoll's novel

CNN  — 

“Luckiest Girl Alive” has a batch going on, successful a mode that undermines the movie’s translation from publication to screen. Mila Kunis produces and stars successful this #MeToo-tinged story, which awkwardly incorporates a wide schoolhouse shooting arsenic good arsenic sex and people authorities into what becomes an ungainly premix of hot-button issues successful 1 melodramatic package.

Kunis plays Ani FaNelli, a have-it-all mag writer adjacent to landing her imagination occupation astatine the New York Times and marrying her affluent fellow Luke (Finn Wittrock), though there’s hostility implicit whether her nonrecreational aspirations volition person to instrumentality a backmost spot to his higher-paying career.

A documentarian, however, is again asking thorny questions astir the schoolhouse shooting that happened erstwhile Ani was attending the prestigious Brentley School, bringing memories flooding backmost astir the intersexual battle she experienced there, astatine the clip receiving small enactment from her social-climbing parent (Connie Britton, reduced to a caricature).

Chiara Aurelia portrays the young Ani, whose ordeal is graphically shown during the dependable watercourse of flashbacks that assail her older self. Those unflinching sequences callback “13 Reasons Why,” different Netflix accumulation built astir a high-school rape and pressures connected a teen miss to stay silent.

Here, the dilemma astir what to accidental resurfaces for the grownup Ani, particularly with 1 of her attackers having achieved a measurement of fame, and fearfulness that speaking retired volition someway derail the yellow-brick roadworthy to high-society beingness that looms up of her. As the handsomely clueless Luke puts it, wherefore code “this happening that happened to you truthful agelong ago.”

As constructed, unfortunately, successful an adaptation of the publication written by its author, Jessica Knoll, and directed by Mike Barker, “Luckiest Girl Alive” feels arsenic if it’s juggling excessively galore plates – joining the communicative successful advancement and laboring to link the wide shooting to Ani’s communicative successful a mode that muddles the mystery. The deficiency of penetration astir the true-crime genre that helps thrust the communicative – that is, the documentary wrong the movie – besides represents a missed opportunity.

While Kunis and Aurelia convey Ani’s anguish, there’s a stick-figure prime to the supporting players, a roster that includes Jennifer Beals arsenic her hard-charging editor, with the objection of a caring teacher (Scoot McNairy) who comes backmost into Ani’s life.

On its face, the operation of a high-profile lead, bestselling publication and provocative taxable substance sounds similar the benignant of look that yields dividends for Netflix, and the movie inactive might. But “Luckiest Girl Alive” falls abbreviated of its promise, a reminder that, nevertheless ironic the rubric is intended to be, luck tends to favour the bold.

“Luckiest Girl Alive” premieres October 7 connected Netflix.