DON'T SAY GOOD LUCK
Don’t Say Good Luck is the kind of movie that sounds much simpler when you describe it than it actually feels while watching it. Sophie Birenbaum is a teenager who loves musical theater and auditions for her high school production of Waitress. She unexpectedly gets the lead, which should be one of the biggest and happiest moments of her life. At almost exactly the same time, she finds out that her mom’s cancer has returned. Suddenly she is rehearsing for a musical, dealing with school, friendships and a crush, while knowing that something much bigger is happening at home.
What I liked about Don’t Say Good Luck is that Sophie is still allowed to be a teenager through all of this. The movie doesn’t suddenly make everything in her life unimportant because her mom is sick. She still cares about the musical. She cares about the boy she likes. She cares about her friends and about whether she is good enough to play the lead. Sometimes she is thinking about things that, from an adult perspective, can seem completely unimportant compared with cancer. But that is exactly what felt real to me. A teenager doesn’t stop being a teenager because something terrible happens in the family, and I think adults sometimes forget that.
I actually found myself thinking about this a lot while watching. When something serious happens, we naturally start deciding which problems are big and which ones are small. But our teenagers don’t necessarily experience their lives that way. A school performance can feel enormous. A friendship problem can take over their entire day. A rejection or an embarrassing moment can feel devastating, even when there is something objectively much more serious happening around them.
Don’t Say Good Luck never makes Sophie look ridiculous for caring about those things, and I liked that. She can be terrified about her mom and still care deeply about going on stage. Both feelings can exist at the same time.
The relationship between Sophie and her mom Elizabeth was the part of the movie I connected with most. Elizabeth, played by Melanie Lynskey, wants Sophie to keep living her life instead of allowing the illness to take over everything. There is something beautiful about that, but it also creates a difficult situation because Sophie knows that her family is not okay. Her parents are trying to protect her, Sophie is trying to understand what is really happening, and everybody is making decisions while they are scared. Nobody has the perfect reaction, which is probably why the family feels believable.
As a parent, that part made me think about how much we should tell our teenagers when something difficult is happening. I understand the instinct to protect them. We don’t want our children worrying about things they cannot fix, and sometimes we think carrying the worry for them is part of our job. But teenagers also notice much more than we think. They hear conversations. They notice changes in our mood. They know when something feels different at home. And when they know something is wrong without knowing exactly what it is, I’m not sure that always feels more protective to them.
This is where I think Don’t Say Good Luck can open a really interesting conversation between parents and teens. I wouldn’t ask my teen something general like, “Should parents always tell their children the truth?” because of course the answer depends on the situation. I would rather ask: If something serious was happening in our family, how much would you want me to tell you? Would you rather know everything, even if it scared you, or would there be things you would rather not know until you needed to? I think the answer could be very different from what we assume our teenager would say.
Sophie also has to deal with something else that I think many teens will recognize, even if their own life looks completely different from hers: trying to work out what she wants while everyone around her has an opinion. Teenagers hear so much about what they should do. Parents have expectations, teachers have expectations, friends have opinions, and then they also put pressure on themselves. We can tell them to follow their dreams, but at the same time we often have very clear ideas about which dreams make sense, which choices are smart and what their future should look like. Don’t Say Good Luck made me think about how difficult it must sometimes be to hear your own voice in the middle of all of that.
The theater part of the movie works especially well because performing matters so much to Sophie. It isn’t simply something happening in the background while the “real” story happens at home. Getting the lead matters to her, rehearsals matter, and being on that stage becomes part of how she deals with everything else. I liked that the movie respects something a teenager cares about instead of using it only as a cute side story. The school production is Waitress, and Sophie’s emotional life and what she is experiencing at home naturally start affecting what she brings to the role.
Sunny Sandler also surprised me. Sophie could easily have become exhausting because she is emotional, confused and sometimes very focused on her own world while her family is facing something enormous. But I didn’t feel that way about her. She feels young. Sometimes she reacts well and sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she understands what her parents are trying to do and sometimes she is angry with them. That is exactly why I believed her. I don’t need a teenage character to behave like the emotionally mature adult in the room for me to like her. In fact, I prefer when a teen character is actually allowed to act like a teen.
I also appreciated that the movie isn’t sad every second just because cancer is part of the story. There is humor, school, romance, awkward moments, family chaos and ordinary life happening alongside the fear. That felt true to me. Families don’t become serious twenty-four hours a day when something difficult happens. People still laugh. Someone still wants food. Kids still argue. You still have to get somewhere on time. And then suddenly the thing you are worried about comes back into your head again. The movie understands that normal life and grief can sit right next to each other.
For parents deciding whether Don’t Say Good Luck is a good movie to watch with a teenager, I think the bigger question is emotional readiness rather than whether it feels like an inappropriate teen movie. In the U.S. it is rated PG-13 for thematic material, some strong language, sexual references and teen drinking. Cancer and the fear of losing a parent are obviously central to the story, so I would think more carefully about that if illness or loss is especially close to your teen right now.
But for me, this is exactly the kind of teen movie I like finding for The Parental Lens because the conversation does not have to feel forced afterward. There are so many places to go with it. We can talk about whether Sophie’s parents handled things the way our teen would want us to. We can talk about whether something can still be important even when somebody else is dealing with something much bigger. We can talk about pressure and expectations, and whether our teens ever feel that the adults around them already have a plan for their life before they have worked out their own.
What stayed with me most after Don’t Say Good Luck wasn’t really the musical or even the cancer story by itself. It was the question of how a family keeps being a family when everyone is scared and nobody really knows the right way to handle it. Parents want to protect their children, teenagers want to be included in their own lives, and sometimes both sides are trying to love each other while wanting completely different things. I think that is why this movie gives parents and teens much more to talk about than you expect when you first press play.
