REVIEW: There Are No Winners in Amazon MGM Studios’ ‘Jackpot!’
Set in 2030, the City of Los Angeles has adopted a “Grand Lottery” law. The law states that the winner will take home the million-dollar jackpot…as long as they survive until sundown on winning day. That’s right, the people of Los Angeles can use any means necessary (expect a gun) to kill the lottery winner, and if they succeed, the killer automatically wins the jackpot. Unaware of this new law, Katie Kim (Awkwafina) who has just returned back to the Los Angeles area after spending years away, enters into the monthly jackpot and wins. But, as they say winners never prosper, and Katie soon finds herself under attack by the citizens of LA. Unsure of how she is going to survive until sundown, jackpot protection agent, Noel (John Cena) appears on the scene. However, Noel isn’t the only one looking to protect Katie, His nemesis, Louis Lewis (Simu Liu) is also on the hunt to protect her. Now, Katie must decide if she trusts Noel enough to help her stay alive until sundown.
On paper, the movie sounds like it would be really, really good. Directed by Paul Feig, led by Cena and Awkwafina, the comedy should just roll of the screen. But that’s not the case with this one. Cena and Awkwafina are great together, but the story doesn’t play to their strengths. These two have proven in other movies that they can take even the most mundane line and make it comical. They can’t do that with this movie. The best parts of their pairing come in blips when Cena’s Noel is rambling on about himself. But those scenes are few and far between.
The movie truly doesn’t find its rhythm until its final act, which may be too late for the audience. The first hour of the movie is spent watching Katie and Noel come across terribly written secondary characters who are trying to kill her. The acting coming from these characters is to overtop that it takes the already unbelievable storyline and makes it completely absurd. It’s not until Liu’s Louis Lewis comes into the picture that the movie gets a tad bit better. The back-and-forth banter between Liu, Cena, and Awkwafina seems natural and actually funny. Sure, it is still ridiculous, but it is more enjoyable than whatever was happening previously.
Jackpot! should have been a jackpot win for Amazon MGM, but it ended up being a complete failure. If you want to check out the movie, I highly recommend fast forwarding until you are a little over the halfway mark and watching from there. You won’t have missed too much, and you will find yourself enjoying the movie more than if you watched it from the very beginning.
Grade: D