'Just My Luck' rises above a lazy Lohan

You're familiar with the movie where the star phones in her performance? Just My Luck is the one where the lead faxes in hers - to a machine where the inkjet needs replacing.

Astonishingly, Lindsay Lohan's going-through-the-motions work in this PG-rated Sex and the City doesn't entirely diminish its 13-Going-on-30 appeal.

In Just My Luck, a cute Manhattan professional with an impossibly charmed life meets a struggling rock-band manager with an improbably cursed one. They kiss. Is fate contagious? Because the fortunate girl catches the swain's misfortune - and vice-versa.

The film observes the calculus of teen movies: Girl = Fashionista; Boy = Rocker. In this case, girl is fashionista with a glam job in public relations; boy is grunge guy who manages a rock band.

Lohan is Ashley Albright, the gal always in the right place at the right time and whose luck is defined by her ability to wear a white raincoat in New York and remain spotless. The envy of her friends and colleagues, Ashley is the one who always gets the cab, the date and the promotion. When it's raining, the sun breaks through where she is.

Chris Pine (the Rob Lowe lookalike from Princess Diaries 2) is Tim Hardin, calamity magnet, janitor at lanes called Rock and Bowl and manager of a British-invasion band called McFly (the surname of the hero in Back to the Future). The person most likely to spill the soup - on himself - Tim is the guy who, even if it's sunny, will get soaked by a freak rainstorm.

In a star turn that hasn't been seen since the heyday of Lana Turner, Lohan swans through the movie, costars trailing in her well-heeled wake.

As self-centeredness has the effect of drawing sympathy for those not at the center, the other players generate most of the film's energy and goodwill. Pine is charming. Likewise, Samaire Armstrong as Ashley's shaggy bud, Maggie.

Lohan is superfluous to the qualities that elevate the film above other Clearasil comedies. I liked the film's idea that luck is like love - something that diminishes when you hoard it and multiplies when you share it.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.

Just My Luck ** 1/2 (out of four stars)

Produced by Arnon Milchan, Arnold Rifkin and Bruce Willis, directed by Donald Petrie, written by I. Marlene King and Amy B. Harris, photography by Dean Semler, music by Teddy Castelluci, distributed by Twentieth Century Fox.

Running time: 1 hour, 42 mins.

Ashley Albright. . . Lindsay Lohan

Jake Hardin. . . Chris Pine

Maggie. . . Samaire Armstrong

Peggy Braden. . . Missi Pyle

David Pennington. . . Chris Carmack

Parent's guide: PG-13 (sexual references)

Playing at: area theaters