She Came to Sin City for a Wholesome Life (Published 2012)

Beth, leaving behind an unsatisfying career as an on-call stripper in Florida, heads to Las Vegas, where she hopes to become a cocktail waitress. Instead, she nestles under the wing of a professional gambler named Dink, who becomes her boss, her mentor, her friend and almost her lover. She learns to make book and handle money, to balance figures in her head and read the odds on dozens of sporting events at once.

The odds would seem to favor “Lay the Favorite,” directed by Stephen Frears and based on Beth Raymer’s vivid, easygoing memoir of a surprisingly wholesome life of vice. Mr. Frears’s name is associated with both the tasty sleaze of “The Grifters” and the high-toned chamber comedy of “The Queen,” so it’s a reasonable bet that he found plenty to work with in the hustle and glitter of Sin City.

And he is assisted by a blue-chip cast, led by Rebecca Hall as Beth, and Bruce Willis as Dink, and including Catherine Zeta-Jones (as Tulip, Dink’s brittle, jealous wife) and Vince Vaughn (as a rival and colleague of Dink’s named Rosie). It should have been a lock.

Instead, the movie is a bust, and, as usual in these situations, it is easier to say how than why, and best to say as little as possible, cut one’s losses and move on. Ms. Hall, a subtle and witty actress (see “Vicki Cristina Barcelona” and “Please Give”), plays Beth as a bundle of squeals and giggles, her volatile energy more irritating than charming.

Mr. Willis is a reassuringly grouchy presence, but not an especially interesting one, though certainly more so than Joshua Jackson, who shows up as a good-humored boyfriend for Beth, once Dink has made it clear that he won’t betray his vows to Tulip.

Most movies about the gambling life inhale the fumes of desperation that accumulate around damaged lives devoted to risk. “Lay the Favorite” tries a different tack, choosing the sweet over the sour and emphasizing Beth’s pluck and innocence. It is, in essence, a coming-of-age story about a young woman learning her way in the world, with a few tears, but little in the way of risk or anguish.

There is nothing wrong with this, except that the movie is hectic, dull and unconvincing. Even when Beth threatens to break up Dink’s marriage — and even, later, when she is threatened with the possibility of prison time — the dramatic and emotional stakes seem trivial.

Mr. Frears, working from a strenuous script by D. V. DeVincentis (“Grosse Pointe Blank,” “High Fidelity”), maintains a fizzy, farcical tempo without allowing anything especially funny or surprising to transpire. They say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but in this case nothing much happens at all.

“Lay the Favorite” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Crude language and topless women.