A strong cast and strong production values can't save Samir Oliveros' story of an underdog who abuses the system.

A clip from the actual 1984 episode "Press Your Luck" that inspired "The Luckiest Man in America" appears in the closing credits, taken from mid-show banter between contestant Michael Larson and Peter Tomarken. Larson has the kind of anecdote that would probably have made a producer laugh during a pre-show interview, when he told Tomarken about trying to make amends with his daughter after missing her birthday and driving an ice cream truck the previous summer to supplement his income as an air conditioning repairman. It's good enough to fill 45 seconds of airtime, but it's hard to see what director Samir Oliveros has done by making it the backbone of a 90-minute film about Larson's infamous game show appearance.

If Larson is remembered now, it’s for the fact that he won $110,000 on the show by memorizing the game’s Big Board algorithm to maximize his prize potential, and Oliveros is admirably more intrigued by why he did it than how. Yet “The Luckiest Man in America” is designed more to answer the first question, constrained by a real-time format to track the day of taping, when Larson threatened to break the bank. The approach should work as the show’s producers scramble to figure out how this cornpone contestant from Lebanon, Ohio, outsmarted them. But even when they start digging up dirt, Oliveros and co-writer Maggie Briggs can’t easily handle the more interesting elements of Larson’s life, from his preparation for the game to the fallout from his appearance while stuck on the set of “Press Your Luck.”

Larson may have a sound strategy for the game, but "The Luckiest Man in America" often has some fuzzy math. With the always likable Paul Walter Hauser as Larson, it's forgivable that "Press Your Luck" producer Bill Cunningham (David Straithairn) is won over by his "aw shucks" attitude, even knowing that Larson snuck into their casting call by taking another candidate's spot. Instead of getting arrested, as Bill's coworker Chuck (Shamier Anderson) has arranged, Larson gets a callback to the show, driving his ice cream truck onto the lot at Television City in Los Angeles.