Stephen Frears is a supremely accomplished director, but perhaps there was little he could do with this garbled and unsatisfying story about gambling. It's an activity that may well be enjoyable to do, but not to watch, or to hear about, from excitable people with no aptitude for making their addiction comprehensible to outsiders. Lay the Favourite is based on the avowedly true-life memoir by Beth Raymer, a wide-eyed young woman who came to Las Vegas looking for nothing more than to be a cocktail waitress, and wound up working for some high-rolling gamblers, running cash and making bets. Rebecca Hall is manically vivacious as Beth, and Bruce Willis shouts a lot as her kindly employer Dink. In fact, everyone does a very great deal of tiresome shouting and yelling, as if they're auditioning for the Max Bialystock role in The Producers. The gambling just isn't interesting, and there's not much of a love story in compensation.