Directed by Roger Kumble, “Beautiful Disaster” is based on a novel written by Jamie McGuire. The film not only has a weak screenplay filled with stereotypical characters, but the entire execution is so below par that it makes it look like a half-baked romance drama that fails to impress you in any manner. As soon as the film begins, you know where it is going to lead you, and even the characters are so bland and weakly written that they fail to grab your attention. “Beautiful Disaster” is an uninteresting and dispassionate love story of two college-going students, and though the writer has tried to add these moments to justify their motivations, it fails to have any sort of impact and turns out to be one of those films that you would want to forget about. So, in this recap, we will try to understand what conflicts our protagonist, Abby, was facing in her life and how she found love at the most unexpected time and place.
Spoilers Alert
‘Beautiful Disaster’ Plot Summary: What Is The Film About?
Abby needed a fresh start, and she knew that as long as she stayed with her father in Las Vegas, it wouldn’t be possible to do that. Abby was a poker prodigy, and she was known by the pseudonym Lucky 13 in the casinos of Vegas. Abby’s father, Mick Abernathy, used his daughter to earn money, and he made her play poker games even though she was not of legal age. Abby had expressed to her father that she wanted to go to college and complete her studies, but he wasn’t letting her do that since he knew that by making her play poker, he could earn money without actually putting in a lot of effort. Abby didn’t have any option but to run away from her house, and she didn’t inform Mick where she was going as she knew that if she did, he would bring her back. Abby took admission in a college, and the best part about it was that she was going to share her room with her best friend, America Mason. Though Abby was tired after traveling all the way from Vegas, America convinced her to come with her and her boyfriend, Shepley, to watch a freestyle street fighting competition. Abby was sure that she was going to enjoy it, but that day, unexpectedly, she met somebody, and the way she stared at him made us realize that she was smitten. Travis Maddox was a street fighting champion, and when he bumped into Abby, he felt this sudden rush of emotions and reciprocated the same energy that Abby had. Travis was quite open about his feelings, and he asked Abby out on a date. Abby, on the other hand, was in denial, as she felt that Travis was not the kind of guy that she was looking for. Abby wanted somebody more stable, somebody who was serious about his career and did not recklessly take part in fighting competitions to earn money.
Abby And Travis Place A Bet
Abby met a guy named Parker, and they started seeing each other. Everybody in that town seemed to be street-fighting fans, and even Parker took Abby to watch a match. Abby didn’t know that Travis was one of the competitors that night, and when he saw her clad in a beautiful dress, he got a bit angry because she had been stalling him and not replying to his texts, and here she was on a date with another guy. Travis wanted Abby to admit that she liked him, but she just kept running away from him because Travis did not match the ideal image she had in her mind of a good guy. While they were arguing, Travis’ opponent scorned him, and seeing how massive he looked, Abby was sure that Travis was not going to win that match. Travis wanted to make things interesting, so he made a wager with Abby where it was decided that if Travis’ opponent laid even a hand on him, he would not have any flings or affairs for the next three months, and if the opposite happened, then Abby would have to move in with him for a period of one month. Abby agreed to it, and she was shocked when Travis actually knocked his opponent out before he would even land a single punch. Abby moved in with Travis, and though she had a lot of problems in the beginning with the untidy manner in which the boys lived, she slowly started getting emotionally attached to Travis.
Abby’s Past Comes To Light
Travis decided to take Abby to his father’s home for dinner and make her meet his family. Abby met the Maddox brothers, and they already seemed to know a lot about her. They decided to play poker together, but Abby backed off by saying that she was not interested in playing. Even the name of the game brought back memories of her childhood, and she remembered how her father used her for his own purposes. Abby got triggered when one of the brothers told her that she could come and play with them as they wouldn’t be very hard on her. Abby took the challenge, and the brothers were shocked to see how good she was at it. Abby’s father started telling everybody that back in the day, there were stories about a guy named Mick Abernathy whose daughter was a poker prodigy, and she used to accompany him wherever he went. Travis’ father figured out that Abby was Lucky 13, and she had been hiding this fact from everyone.
The Maddox brothers got starstruck that they had been defeated by none other than the poker prodigy herself, about whom they had only heard stories up until then. Travis and Abby got intimate that night, though Abby was still in denial and constantly feeding herself lies that she didn’t like him. Travis saw a text on her laptop, and he thought that she had been secretly seeing another guy behind his back when in reality, the text was from her father. Travis stayed out the whole night, and Abby got scared as she didn’t know where he had suddenly left in the middle of the night. Travis came back in the morning, and that’s when Abby told him that Mick was her father, and Travis took a sigh of relief. Travis arranged for a pre-birthday surprise party for her to make up for his actions, but Abby was still mad at him because of the way he had behaved when he had seen her father’s text. Abby and Travis had a heated argument, but after that, they reconciled when they realized that both had fallen for each other, and there was no point in resisting that feeling.
‘Beautiful Disaster’ Ending Explained: How Did Abby Pay Mick’s Debts?
Mick Abernathy once again came back into Abby’s life, and she came to know that he was in heavy debt, and Benny, the casino owner, wanted Abby to start playing again and give him back his money. Benny sent his guy to bring Abby to his place, and though Abby resisted at first, she agreed to play just this one time and pay off the debt. Abby had seen how miserable her father looked, and she just couldn’t leave him in that helpless state. Abby was still underage, so the danger of her being caught while playing was still there. Abby went to a casino, joined the high-stakes table, and won the game. She was leaving the casino with the chips when an old friend named Jesse Viveros, who worked there as a security chief, came and met her. Jesse told Abby that he couldn’t let her take the chips because he knew that she was underage. Abby had a nervous breakdown, and she didn’t know what to tell Benny and her father. She called her father and told him to go into hiding, dispose of his mobile, and buy a burner phone, and then she went to Benny’s office to tell him about what had happened. Benny told her that she would have to play poker for him, and they would split the proceeds, but Abby didn’t want to play poker for a living. Toward the end of “Beautiful Disaster,” Travis stomped inside Benny’s office, beat Benny and his guards, and escaped together with Abby. Abby and Travis stayed in a hotel for that night, and Travis decided that he would enroll himself in a street fighting competition to pay off Mick’s debt. Travis knew the kind of risk he was taking because the guy who was up against him was no amateur brawler but a lethal fighter.
Meanwhile, Abby was still figuring out where Travis had gone when she got the biggest shock of her life in “Beautiful Disaster.” She accidentally saw her father with Jesse, the guy who had taken her chips, and she realized that she was being tricked into believing that her father was in debt so that she would start playing poker again. Abby felt shattered, as her own father had broken her trust and betrayed her in the worst possible manner. Abby confronted her father and told him that she didn’t want to see him ever again, then went to the arena where Travis was supposed to have his fight, and she saved Travis before he got himself killed. Abby found a bag of cash in her car, and she realized that it was the same money she had won in that casino that Jesse was going to give to her father.
Fortunately, everything ended on a good note, and now, in addition to having a loving boyfriend, Abby also had the money to pay for her education. Probably Abby and Travis will start living together, and Abby will get the love she deserves and hasn’t gotten in her life. We believe that considering Mick and Benny were so hellbent on bringing Abby back to the poker table; they will not give up so easily. Mick will try to once again come into good graces with his daughter and convince her to help his cause. The problem was that Mick didn’t want to work, and he wanted to earn easy money without doing anything. He had formed this habit, and now it was very difficult for him to change it. As for Travis, he got what he wanted. He had his priorities straight, and since the beginning, he has been vocal about his feelings and what he expected from Abby. Abby had a chance to start afresh, something that she had wanted for a very long time. Abby will definitely finish her studies, try to build her life block by block, and also find a white-collar job to earn her living.
