‘Don’t Say Good Luck’ Review: Sunny Sandler, Melanie Lynskey Drama

From the opening minutes of Netflix’s Don’t Say Good Luck, it’s clear the spring of 2026 is going to be big in the life of high school sophomore Sophie Birenbaum (Sunny Sandler).

A consummate theater kid, she’s been practicing and practicing her audition number for the school’s production of Waitress. She looks forward to the long hours of rehearsal alongside her BFF and her crush, to capping off yet another school year with the rush of opening night.

But the transformative experience that hits her isn’t quite what she expected. By the time Sophie lands the lead role, the very ground beneath her feet has shifted with news that her mother’s (Melanie Lynskey) cancer has returned. The drama by Julia Hart (Fast Color) traces the intertwined journeys of Sophie’s play and her mother’s illness with an observant eye and a warm touch, sensitive to the bittersweet fact that just because the world is ending on one front doesn’t mean the rest of it stops turning, too.

At school or among friends, Sophie passes all the usual adolescent milestones. She develops a flirty rapport with her leading man (Jack Champion). She has a falling-out with her childhood friend (Scarlett Estevez) as their interests begins to diverge. She gets way too drunk at a party, necessitating what a pal accurately describes as “the greatest acting challenge of your young life” when her dad (an appealingly scruffy Max Greenfield as Ted) comes to pick her up. She hones her talents under the guidance of her drama teacher (Stephanie Beatriz as Ms. Parker), and comes into her own as a performer.

At home, Sophie deals, or often tries very hard not to deal, with the reality of her mom’s illness. The script, by Hart, Laura Hankin and Jordan Horowitz, eschews the sort of grand emotional moments a more conventional cancer drama might build its narrative around — the initial diagnosis or the discussion of options or the tribulations of treatment — in favor of little details that accumulate bit by bit into a grim prognosis: how the family’s plans to spend the summer at their beach house sound a little less certain every time they’re brought up; how Liz has less and less energy for the long book she’s been reading. The realization of what it all adds up to sinks in so gradually that at some point, it feels like we’ve always known.

Sophie would be the first to acknowledge that her petty adolescent woes don’t matter anywhere near as much as her mom’s illness — and in fact does, when her grandmother (Bebe Neuwirth) accuses her of prioritizing the play over family during a Mother’s Day weekend. And her little brother might not get why she’s so fussed about starring in some dumb show in the first place. “Why do they sing? Just be talking,” he complains, with typical little-kid bluntness. But Don’t Say Good Luck recognizes that Sophie’s high school problems still matter, that the play is as much catharsis as it is distraction. Or, as Sophie puts it, “Music can make you feel things that are bigger than just talking.”

That the film is so fine-grained in its empathy and authentic in its emotions makes its occasional, minor missteps stand out all the more. Here and there, you can see the narrative gears creaking to get the story where it needs to go: One butt dial from Dad is a throwaway joke, two is a payoff to that setup, three in the first 20 minutes just starts to feel like laziness. (Blessedly, there is not a fourth.)

Supporting players are so thinly sketched that they seem more like functional objects for Sophie to act out against than people who might continue to exist when the Birenbaums aren’t interacting directly with them.

And then there are the minor, extremely nitpicky things that don’t really matter and aren’t even technically wrong, but nevertheless feel off enough to chip away at the film’s naturalistic façade — like the hellacious late-’80s-ness of the maternity dress Liz claims to have worn while pregnant with Sophie, even though that would have been circa 2010.

But even when such flaws let the story down, the lovely ensemble never does. Steve Buscemi makes the most of his brief screen time as Sophie’s grandfather, a welcome pillar of straightforward understanding and wry humor in destabilizing times. (Dale’s pragmatic reaction to Sophie asking if she can get a ride home from a boy: “If I was your father, I’d say no. But I’m your grandfather, so I say wear a seatbelt and call me if he gets handsy.”) Jon Lovitz might be playing a one-note punchline, as an employee of Ted’s who’s absolutely incensed by the deli’s new healthy options, but it’s never not funny to watch his (literally) spitting disgust at the concept of a kale wrap.

Of course, it’s the leading ladies who really make the film. Sandler, who showed real promise with her first lead role in the amiable nepo family affair that was You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, rises to the challenge of letting us in on how Sophie is feeling when often she’s unable or unwilling to know herself. But the real gem of this ensemble (as she is in pretty much everything she touches) is Lynskey, who’s never less than completely and utterly present even as Liz increasingly struggles to be. A little bit funny, a lot cheesy and completely, unabashedly earnest, her Liz is — like moms everywhere — at once a perfectly ordinary woman and the center of the universe.

The love between Sophie and Liz radiates from their every interaction, even before the bad news hits. In doting-parent fashion, Liz understands she’s not allowed to wish her actress daughter “good luck,” but can’t quite bring herself to spout the traditional theater benediction: “But I would be so sad if you broke your leg,” she pouts adorably. Really, it almost strains credulity how good their relationship is, despite Sophie being in her prime adolescent-angst years. But so what if it’s possible to quibble with some of the details? Where it counts most, in its tenderness toward young Sophie, her mother and her art, Don’t Say Good Luck rings as true and clear as any Broadway showstopper.