Jackpot! premieres on Prime Video Thursday, August 15.
For many people, winning the lottery is a dream like no other. But there are many horrifying possibilities that accompany a grand prize awarded at random, and they’ve animated the imaginations of artists of all kinds, be they an acclaimed author like Shirley Jackson or a maestro of cinematic spectacle and schlock like Michael Bay. Add to that list Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, whose Jackpot! presents its own unique sweepstakes: Winners of a near-future Los Angeles’ so-called Grand Lottery must stay alive until sundown in order to claim their money, which may be swiped by anyone who kills them.
The dystopia isn’t far from the dour realities that Black Mirror often presents, but Feig and writer Rob Yescombe are aiming for comedy. This absurd version of L.A. – with its wealth inequality overemphasized by the rich stepping over homeless people to the tune of Weezer’s “Beverly Hills” and practically every character being a wannabe performer of some sort, including protagonist Katie Kim (Awkwafina) – is a fun concept, chock full of possibility. But it ends up feeling a bit superficial in execution. Feig and Yescombe are content to their premise as window dressing, rather than engaging with the ludicrousness of legalized, for-profit murder or actually mining the ridiculous personalities it introduces for anything more than a passing gag. When Katie unsuspectingly receives the Grand Lottery’s biggest pot ever – something she doesn’t even quite understand as she only just moved to L.A. – the entire city sets its sights on her, with her only defense being the for-hire bodyguard (John Cena) who arrives in the nick-of-time while she’s first being attacked.
As ridiculous and potentially entertaining as it all sounds, Jackpot! is constantly torn between being a riotous comedy, a sincere drama, and a sprawling action picture. With Feig never choosing to stick to a single one of these modes – perhaps foolishly believing he could nail all three – the film never quite hits any peaks in any form. As in The Heat and Spy, his attempts at action filmmaking are the most frustrating, with the majority of Jackpot!’s fights and chases feeling watered down, except for those rare instances where it leans into slapstick and gleeful rag-doll tossing. There are moments when the movie looks like it could veer into the realm of, say, Jackie Chan’s superior ’80s action-comedies, but there’s simply no real interest in the staging or choreography beyond a couple of playfully deployed weapons.
Jackpot! features as many perfectly landed one-liners as it does dull jokes, and it’s served poorly by Feig’s anonymous brand of comedy filmmaking. His work lives and dies on the charisma of its stars – actors like Kristen Wiig or Melissa McCarthy have elevated the bare bones scripting of previous Feig projects, which is often sidelined in favor of tossed-off banter or improvisation. Jackpot!’s leads certainly aren’t bad, but they are limited in their abilities as actors in both comedy and action. Awkwafina’s typical shtick is thankfully toned down here, but Cena goes for broke – and the results are both good and bad. What they both handle shockingly well is the sincerity of Jackpot!, their characters’ relationship, and their backstories. Every time the story slows down to build upon their bonding, both actors deliver their lines with a real weight, like they aren’t just pawns in a middling action-comedy whose thin screenplay seems largely designed to accommodate more cheap joke inserts. But that’s exactly what makes the rest of Jackpot!, and its inability to blend its many, disparate ingredients into a satisfying whole, all the more frustrating.
The true treasures are found in the supporting cast, with actors like Seann William Scott, Dolly de Leon, and Murray Hill providing refreshment in their literal mere moments on screen. Ayden Mayeri is the standout here, playing a fellow aspiring actress renting out a bedroom (and clothes) to Katie who, unsurprisingly, turns on her tenant as soon as she can. She’s pitch perfect, excelling not only at retorts, one-liners, and giving her scene partners a leg up, but also with the couple of physical-comedy bits she’s given. It's a crime that Mayeri and others are sidelined for a suffocating Machine Gun Kelly cameo or a major role for Simu Liu in which Awkwafina's Shang-Chi co-star lacks any sense of real comic timing. The talented comedians in smaller parts don’t get their chance to shine during the film proper – that’s limited to a gag reel that lasts throughout the entire end credits. Hill, whose brand of camp would have worked wonders throughout, gets stuck in as a post-credits gag implying the potential of a sequel.
And that’s the biggest problem with Jackpot!: It fails to embrace all the things that could make it great. Even its title, changed from the charmingly on-the-nose Grand Death Lotto, betrays a comfort with settling. It’s not technically bad, but it’s not especially good either. It’s just a shame that a film that opens with a blast of an action sequence and whose setup yields tons of well-scripted humor can’t quite manage to find the right groove.
