JACKPOT (2024) - Movie Review

Director: Paul Feig
Starring: John Cena, Awkwafina, Ayden Mayeri, Donald Elise Watkins, Simu Liu
Genre: Action, Comedy
Writer: Rob Yescombe
Runtime: 106 min
Rated: Rated R for pervasive language, violence, and sexual references
Buy This Movie: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV

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Synopsis:

In the near future, a ‘Grand Lottery’ has been established - the catch: kill the winner before sundown to legally claim their multi-billion dollar jackpot. When Katie Kim (Awkwafina) mistakenly finds herself with the winning ticket, she reluctantly joins forces with amateur lottery protection agent Noel Cassidy (John Cena) who must get her to sundown in exchange for a piece of her prize.

Review:

You either love or hate Paul Feig's movies. I find myself among the former. I enjoyed "Bridesmaids", "The Heat", "Spy", "A Simple Favor" and "Last Christmas". The latter has become one of my favorite holiday movies. Few people probably remember his 2003 directorial debut "I Am David", a damn fine drama which he also wrote based on a novel by Anne Holm. But, yes, he's also directed a few duds, including the 2016 "Ghostbusters" and the Netlix fantasy film "The School for Good and Evil".

"Jackpot" unfortunately ranks among his worst. Mixing "The Purge" with "The Running Man", its hook is the dumb dystopian concept of a lottery that encourages killing the jackpot winner before sundown. It also finds Feig letting loose with some of the worst comedic excesses since his all-female "Ghostbusters", which means throwing rapid-fire gags and quips at the audience in a desperate attempt to get some laughs. It didn't get a single laugh out of me.

John Cena and Awkwafina are the film's biggest assets, and while the script is basically trash, they still give their all, and that at least makes "Jackpot" watchable, if not particularly enjoyable. I wish filmmakers would understand that loading your script with movie references does not automatically make it funny, it just adds to the cringe. There's also way too much improvisation that doesn't work, which makes one wonder whether those were the best takes they had.

Screenwriter Rob Yescombe's writing credits are mostly video games like "The Invisible Hours", "Rime", "Q.U.B.E." and "The Division". That explains a lot, actually, as this movie mostly feels like a video game, with non-stop frantic action and very little coherent story. At the very least, the action is pretty well directed, with decent choreography and stunts. It's just too bad the characters never shut up for a second.

It's not hard to understand why "Jackpot" was unceremoniously dumped on streaming. It's a painfully unfunny comedy that tries to make up for a shoddy script with incessant improv and disjointed action sequences. This is one to avoid.

SCORE: 5/10