Unfunny Lottery Ticket Doesn’t Hit the Jackpot
Kevin Carson (Bow Wow) has just won the lottery. Problem is, it’s the Fourth of July weekend so he can’t turn the ticket in and collect his $370-million paycheck for a full three days. With best friends Benny (Brandon T. Jackson) and Stacie (Naturi Naughton) by his side, the fresh-faced youngster quickly comes to realize money – even the possibility of money – isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Soon the entire neighborhood is trying to get close to him in ways he never could have imagined beforehand, that lottery ticket becoming a life-threatening curse instead of a life-changing blessing.
Brandon T. Jackson and Bow Wow in Lottery Ticket © Warner Bros.
Lottery Ticket is rough. There is a solid premise buried somewhere inside director and co-writer Erik White’s debut feature, and he’s hired an even more solid cast (including Loretta Devine, Ice Cube, Keith David, Terry Crews, Bill Bellamy and Mike Epps) to bring it to life. But nothing here connects, nothing feels genuine, and by the time things come to their inevitable conclusion the only thing honest about any of this is the utter disgust and disappointment I felt walking out of the movie theatre.
Pity, because I’m serious when I say this one had some potential, and I’m talking in regards to both comedy and drama. A movie about a kid from the projects coming into a ton of money could go into a plethora of interesting and colorful directions. I could imagine someone like a youthful Spike Lee tearing into this with gusto and panache, unafraid to dig into corners or go into back alleys other, less adventurous or skillful directors would dare.
But sadly that’s exactly what we have here, a less skillful director afraid of doing anything challenging or assuming his audience has half a brain. Everything comes from a place of ease, the movie blatantly copying the likes of Coming to America or Do the Right Thing at every turn refusing to be original. It’s violent for the sake of being violent, crass for the sake of being crass, nothing ever connecting in an emotional or personal way that would make any of this idiotic excess palatable.
I'm a Bow Wow fan. When he made Like Mike I was impressed with his maturity, especially considering the film was nothing more than a routine family comedy. But I was even more taken with him in Malcolm D. Lee’s surprising 2005 winner Roll Bounce. The kid is just so darn likeable on a lot of levels, his performances routinely hinting at depth and worldliness belying his young age.
Here, however, no matter how hard he (or even the equally likeable Jackson or Naughton) tries the movie continually undercuts him at every turn. Just when you think he’s going to tap into something honest and true White and company suddenly introduce someone like Epps’ hyperactive preacher or showcase an incredibly violent showdown between Crews’ thug Jimmy the Driver (charged with protecting Kevin) and the neighborhood’s heavy Lorenzo (played by an aggressively sinister Gbenga Akinnagbe). Bow Wow looks uncomfortable and completely out of his element, and even though he and Jackson share a natural, lived-in chemistry their relationship never has an opportunity thrive.
I tend to go for movies where people get the opportunity to overcome circumstances born of poverty, political indifference and/or social disorder. I love seeing a neighborhood come together as one to sand up against those who do them damage or hold them down. There is something about this kind of melodramatic story element that always makes me smile, and as long as it is even moderately believable I’ll give pictures that go in that particular direction a heck of a lot of rope to hang themselves.
I wanted to do just that with Lottery Ticket but the movie just never gave me the chance. White slips the noose around his film’s neck with such startling speed it’s dead long before I even realized oxygen wasn’t getting to its brain. This movie just sits there, inert, comatose, mortally wounded, and by the time the clichés were so thick you could cut them with a samurai sword I was so fed up I was hoping the filmmakers would cut my head off instead of just continuing to stab their lifeless corpse of their motion picture.
Film Rating: ê1/2 (out of 4)
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