Lucky Stiff

2014 Directed by Christopher Ashley

A musical comedy about diamonds, dogs, love & death.

An English shoe salesman inherits 6 million dollars from a recently deceased uncle he has never met before, on the condition that he takes the uncle's corpse on a trip to Monte Carlo.

Dominic Marsh Nikki M. James Pamela Shaw Jason Alexander Dennis Farina Don Amendolia Kate Shindle Mary Birdsong Anthony Skordi Jayne Houdyshell Maggie Carney Kent Avenido Herschel Sparber Steve West Mary Jo Catlett Noah Weisberg Cheyenne Jackson Jennifer Cody Jim Piddock Juliet Mills Benjamin Stone Paul Tigue Kevin Chamberlin Heather Ayers Chryssie Whitehead Bobbie Bates Nancy DeMars Marty Dew Hannah Douglass Show All…

78 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Nicole ★★★★½

An absolutely delightful diversion in the grand tradition of screwball musicals. Dominic Marsh is charming as the hapless shoe salesman, Nikki M. James is perfectly cast, and the rest of the cast are uniformly quality (and they can sing and dance!). The score (by my personal favourite musical team) is put to good use, and though the budget shows a bit, the style of the thing is great fun. Half a star off for that unnecessary cross-dressing gag.
Review by Nicole ★★★★½

Still love this little film. A+ screenplay from Lynn Ahrens too.

Recent reviews

Review by leah ★½

there were two songs that I thought were okay but the rest weren't amazing
none of the performances were that amazing, and it wasn't shot particularly amazing
just kind of boring in my opinion.. could have used more genuine comedy and better songs
Review by RainbowGlasses ★★

A reminder that movie musicals are hard to make. The leads (Dominic Marsh & Nikki James) are likeable but the "comic relief villains" (Jason Alexander & Pamela Shaw) are giving late night dinner theater performances. And the staging of the numbers is often a busy mess. Animated sequences suggest this would work better as a 20 minute cartoon.
Review by Sam ★★★★

HELL YEAH!
Review by Adam ★★★★

In my senior year of high school, we did a musical called Lucky Stiff. It was a fun, charming farce that stuck with me. The idea of adapting it to film was one of the many reasons I ended up studying film in the first place. Obviously somebody beat me to it, but the film they made does the show better justice than I think I ever would.
This movie was made on a shoestring budget and it shows big time. The editing is sloppy and the sound mixing is frankly disheartening, which is only made worse by the movie being a musical. But the adaptation of the songs didn't lose too much of the charm, and the cast brings…
Review by Sam ★★★★

I wish more movies were like this movie, you know? so... EFFORTLESSLY bad
Review by Karen ★★★★

A campy madcap musical with murder and dogs??? Hello, yes. This is 100% up my alley.
I've been a fan of this musical for years, I think it's super underrated. I honestly wasn't expecting much from this film but they did a surprisingly good job with it. The low budget actually works perfectly with the material. I had a TON of fun watching this, would recommend.
My two complaints:
1. They did a really bad job developing the relationship between Annabel and Harry... the chemistry and build-up was almost non-existent.
2. There's this 2 second scene they added that was absolutely BIZARRE and felt vaguely transphobic??? just like?? why?
But mostly I think this was a pretty decent adaptation and I'm glad it exists. It tickles me.
Review by Peter Charney ★★

I wonder if all the girls who do “Times Like This” for their audition song know the plot of this musical lmao
Ya...this doesn’t work. But I care about everyone involved and love the early Ahrens and Flaherty tunes.
Review by Jacob Tiauli ★★★

I once did this show in high school and jumped when found out this was made into a film and brought back so many good memories ~ Three Stars.
Review by Chloe Spears ★

The stage musical this film is based on is part of the classic stable of plays you've never heard of that are inexplicably popular in the community theatre world.
I guess in that sense, it's fitting that the film adaptation was a no-budget limited release.
I've seen one of those community theatre productions of Lucky Stiff before, and it was charming but forgettable. Musical farce is a difficult thing to pull off, as the breakneck pace of farce is at odds with the genre expectation that solos and duets should pause the action. (You could make a musical with only ensemble songs, but few do. They're hard to write.)
I thought the stage show did an alright job at navigating…
Review by George Hickman ★★★½

Slight, but adorable. (And currently free to watch on Amazon Prime).
Review by Travis ♋️ ★★★½

In spite of some cheap CGI backgrounds and animated cop outs, Lucky Stiff is hard to resist with its lively pace, fun music and talented cast.
Nikki M. James singing a confessional ballad about preferring the company of dogs to men is a real treat, as are majority of the performances in this charming musical farce.
Review by Nicole ★★★★½

Still love this little film. A+ screenplay from Lynn Ahrens too.