Movies that deal with terminal cancer tend to focus on the grim details of impending death, but Julia Hart’s mother-daughter drama Don’t Say Good Luck is focused more on living alongside the diagnosis. There are arguments over what to tell the kids and what’s the right way to behave around such news. But at the heart of the movie, there’s a tender relationship between a parent trying to do what’s best for their child, and a kid who doesn’t know what to do when she realizes her life is about to change forever.
Sophie (Sunny Sandler) is a budding musical theater performer aiming for her next big role in her high school’s annual musical, a production of Waitress. Outside of classes and rehearsals, she shares a close relationship with her mom Elizabeth (Melanie Lynskey), dad (Max Greenfield), and is a reluctant big sister to her two twin brothers, who ask too many questions. When Elizabeth’s cancer returns, she swears her husband to secrecy, asking to keep things as normal as possible. But when her parents (Steve Buscemi and Bebe Neuwirth) arrive to help with the kids, tensions flare. Elizabeth’s mom demands her granddaughter stop spending so much time in rehearsal—and more time with her teacher Ms. Parker (Stephanie Beatriz) than with her mother—raising Sophie’s suspicion that her mother is sicker than she was led to believe. As the day of the performance draws closer, Elizabeth becomes unable to attend, and Sophie is torn between the belief that “the show must go on” or that she should spend more time with her mother while she can.
It’s a story that could have easily crashed into a ditch of maudlin weepy scenes, but it holds back those stores of emotions until just the right moment. Instead, Don’t Say Good Luck is about the struggle to face the impossible, of enjoying the time you have left with someone you know won’t be around for much longer. Hart, who co-wrote the film with her husband and longtime collaborator Jordan Horowitz and novelist Laura Hankin, finds little moments of levity to deepen Sophie’s story beyond its main tragedy.
When Sophie struggles with a Southern accent for a role, her mom pretends they’re visiting from Georgia and pushes her to practice until she feels comfortable. Sophie also contends with the everyday growing pangs endemic to coming-of-age dramas, like a best friend who’s drifting away from doing things together in order to go on dates and a mounting crush on the guy she’s kissing on stage in the musical. While some clashes between the generations are more obvious than others, Hart layers in other subtle touches hinting at the family’s history. Through production design and dialogue, she resurfaces tensions between Elizabeth’s non-Jewish parents and her husband’s Jewish roots, hinting at disagreements buried long ago but still occasionally resurfaced, like most families with their share of conflict. These subplots are just as important to Sophie’s development as her relationship with her mom, and they reinforce the story’s realistic grounding.
Sophie may be the main character, but Elizabeth is also allowed her moments to step out on her own, especially when arguing with her own mother or trying to see her daughter perform. Hart avoids the typical cinematic language of melodrama by keeping Yuli’s score soft and her performer’s reactions relatively tapered. The adults are trying to keep it together for the kids, and the kids don’t yet understand the enormity of the situation, so it’s not until later that the waterworks begin, at which point, the relationships between the characters are firmly established. Hart also reteams with her I’m Your Woman cinematographer Bryce Fortner to give the film a somber but rich palette, where the family’s home looks cozy, their bagel business looks sunny and busy, and Sophie’s theater class looks imposingly big, driving home the pressure she’s under in the spotlight.
In the spotlight and at home, Sandler bears the tough burden of carrying the bulk of the movie’s emotional beats. While not all of them land, her shared scenes with Lynskey absolutely do, and the two share a deeply believable parent-teenager dynamic—sometimes contentious and sometimes quite emotional when running into life’s first barriers. Around them, a number of actors typically known for comic roles turn in strong, low-key dramatic performances. Greenfield is a pleasant surprise as Elizabeth’s unwavering if exasperated source of support, Beatriz emerges as a nurturing musical theater teacher, and even Neuwirth—combative as her character is with her daughter—is clearly acting out of pain and grief. Additionally, Happy Madison stalwarts Buscemi and Jon Lovitz make pleasant appearances to lighten up the story.
Avoiding the melodrama of something like the Nicholas Sparks adaptation of A Walk To Remember, Don’t Say Good Luck earns its tissue-box crescendo, not by torturing its audience with the mom’s declining health and death, but by following a teenager’s realization that life is not always a given. It realistically depicts the loss of innocence around one’s first brush with mortality; when one classmate tries to commiserate with Sophie by comparing it to his parents’ divorce, in that it is a big life-altering event, but even he walks it back and just offers his support. There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to news like this, and Don’t Say Good Luck doesn’t need there to be. By focusing on life and its messiness instead of looming death, Hart’s film earns the emotion other cancer dramas take for granted.
Director: Julia Hart
Writers: Julia Hart, Jordan Horowitz, Laura Hankin
Starring: Sunny Sandler, Melanie Lynskey, Max Greenfield, Stephanie Beatriz, Bebe Neuwirth, Steve Buscemi, Jon Lovitz
Release Date: August 14, 2026 (Netflix)
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