Despite having two stars with great instincts and chemistry and a comedy legend working behind the camera, the dodgy, messy Jackpot! fails to add up to the sum of its parts. Or to use a lottery analogy, it has three numbers right in a seven number game, barely enough for a free ticket in most parts. Never finding a balance between the darkness at the core of its story and the T-H-I-C-K layer of goofiness that surrounds it all, Jackpot! betrays a good concept, leaves a solid director looking like this was a work for hire gig all the way, and strands several fine actors in a high concept story that’s faltering around them.
The year is 2030 – a few years following “a great depression” – and everyone in the world seems to have a grift or a side hustle to get by. Everyone, except for struggling actress Katie Kim (Awkwafina), a former child star in commercials who has recently moved to Los Angeles from Michigan to make another go of things. The city has devolved into even more of a cesspool than she remembered, but that’s okay because the government has instituted a new lottery to help boost morale, and a huge $3.6 billion jackpot is just on the horizon. For the winner, that amount of money is life changing, but it comes with a catch: anyone who is able to find and kill the ticket holder before sundown can claim the prize as their own (with the only caveat being that guns aren’t allowed). Katie accidentally lucks into the winning ticket, wins, and is suddenly seized upon by hundreds of crazy Angelinos. Enter Noel (John Cena), a professional protector who makes a living off keeping lottery winners alive until sundown for 10% of the winnings. Not wanting the money, but liking the idea of staying alive, Katie reluctantly agrees to accept the kindly, sweet natured Noel’s help.
The script for Jackpot! comes courtesy of Rob Yescombe, whose primary background is in writing for video games, something that shows in the film’s many ludicrous melee set pieces and low aiming gags. The premise is an easily identifiable mash-up – The Purge meets It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but pitched at the level of Idiocracy – but not one devoid of potential. It’s not that this idea for a story can’t work, but rather that the pieces never fully line up in a satisfying way or make tonal sense. The large scale fight scenes and set pieces are well choreographed, but some of them are played for tension and drama while others are all out Three Stooges level slapstick where people fly fifty feet in the air with a single punch, sometimes changing tones mid-scene. This push and pull between making a more serious buddy comedy and something anarchic and satirical is evident right from the Feig’s cold open, when the viewer doesn’t really know yet if they should be laughing at what’s happening or terrified by it.
The script never picks a side, so Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy) never bothers to, either. Despite some awful CGI (something I will continue complaining about until studios get the hint), Feig’s direction feels like a filmmaker trying to do things that will keep himself amused, rather than creating elements that can make a stronger whole. Like several of Feig’s other films, which rely heavily on having seasoned comedic pros in the lead, large swaths of story that could help things make sense appear to have been left somewhere on the cutting room floor (just look to the film’s closing reel of outtakes for proof of that), but in the case of Jackpot!, everything is so heightened that it feels like the right call to excise as much bloat as possible. Jackpot! is definitely a film that could stand to learn the lesson that sometimes less is more.
Feig also makes a good decision in letting Awkwafina and Cena use their comic talents to come up with banter and scenarios that are better than what the script is offering up. The leads – and Simu Liu’s slick antagonist, a rival lotto winner protector who has history with Noel – are all smart enough to land some quality zingers that are able to generate chuckles and smiles, even as the more elaborate set pieces falter and flounder around them. Throughout Jackpot!, I kept wishing the film wasn’t expending so much energy on being wacky and zany and spent more time approaching the concept from a more grounded direction. The leads can be silly enough, but the material has to give them something back. If Jackpot! were a more straightforward action comedy (something Feig can actually pull off, even though he doesn’t here), this could’ve been a winner. Instead, it’s just another losing ticket destined for the recycling bin.
Jackpot streams on Prime Video starting Thursday, August 15, 2024.
