BY TOM SOMACH

“Lucky You,” a movie about poker that was a bigger bomb than Hiroshima when it premiered in movie theaters last May, has just come out on DVD.

The film, starring Eric Bana, Drew Barrymore and Robert Duvall, takes place at the 2003 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and features cameo appearances by numerous professional poker players.

When the movie came out, on the first weekend of May of this year, it did not even finish among the top five grossing movies of the week in North America–it came in tied for sixth.

And while movie-goers ignored “Lucky You,”=9D movie critics savaged it.

The Associated Press called the motion picture bland=9D and ordinary and the New York Post called it listless, painful=9D and a flop,=9D and on a scale of zero to four stars gave it a half a star.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it dull=9D, boring=9D and a waste of time and money and on a scale of zero to five stars gave it one star, while the Niagara Falls Reporter called the film lifeless=9D and said it falls short.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch was perhaps the most blunt, summing up the movie in one word: lousy. =9D Despite the box office bust and the critics’ collective pan, “Lucky You” could still be a hit on DVD.

Why?

Because people who stay home and play online poker for hours on end–people not likely to go out to a movie theater–might be willing to buy a DVD they can watch at home while playing poker online.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)