The notion of a dsytopian America turned into a vapid, violent wasteland thanks to ignorance and greed is hardly a new one – especially since it may have already happened during the 80s – but countless movies have tried to saterize this concept with varying degrees of seriousness. From the gaudy sci-fi of The Running Man to the home invasion horror tropes of The Purge, the sight of honest, everyman Americans fighting for their lives just to make a life for themselves has proved to be a busy muse for filmmakers, but Paul Feig’s Jackpot! may be the most oddly cheerful entrant of them all.
Essentially styling itself as Idiocracy meets The Purge, Jackpot! delivers a California of the a near, alternate future, where the lottery has some rather extreme side rules for those desperately wanting to get rich quick. But while most films of its ilk have something profound to say, Jackpot! sets its sights amusingly lower…
Welcome to California of 2030, where a financially desperate government has created the Grand Lottery in order to somehow counteract the shocking inflation that has swept the state. It works pretty much like an ordinary lottery, expect that if you win, you have to survive until the end of the day, otherwise any one with a losing ticket has a chance to win your winnings from you if they manage to kill you stone dead. The only real rule is that anything goes, except no one is allowed to kill the winner using guns – however, blunt instruments, knives and any kind of thrown weapon is a-okay.
Into this deranged hellhole wanders Katie Kim, a former child actress who has returned to LA in order to get back into acting after the death of her mother and finds herself in a (literally) shitty Airbnb hoping to catch a break in a city that demands you pay for the privilege. But while taking part in a casting call, Katie finds an unregistered ticket in a borrowed pair of pants that she accidently activates only to find that she’s won a record amount of $3.6 billion – however, the trouble is that thanks to her time out of town, Katie has absolutely no clue about what the Lottery actually is and before she knows it, everybody is trying to kill her.
Well… not everybody. You see, when things are looking their bleakest, she’s suddenly saved by the hulking, good natured Noel Cassidy, a freelance Lottery protection agent who pops up to try and get her to the deadline alive for only a 10% asking fee. Signing him up while in a constant state of panic, Katie now has herself a protector, which may not even the odds that much, but it’s certainly something.
But with drones transmitting her location every fifteen minutes to the baying, bloodthirsty people desperate to get her winnings, can Katie and Noel possibly hope to make it before the population of LA is hoping to put the dead into deadline…?
So, despite claims of satire, all Jackpot! really wants to do is make you belly laugh rather than make you think about the situation our characters find themselves in. While there’s numerous points to be raised about out of control inflation and an America so strapped for cash, wannabe actors have to cough up $400 just to audition, Feig would rather be having leads Awkwafina and John Cena bounce off each other while he has numerous stunt performers bounce off various sturdy looking surfaces. Taken on this level alone, Jackpot! actually manages to fulfill its brief rather admirably, charging into its concept with the boundless energy of a Jackie Chan film meeting a Futurama episode. The colours are bright, the action is pretty much non-stop and Paul Feig manages to continue his streak as one of the only high level comedy directors still operating with such a budget – even if the movie is an Amazon premier title.
Keeping up with the pace are its leads who genuinely look like they’re having a whale of a time trading ad-libs and engaging in numerous, legitimately taxing comedy brawls and Awkwafina especially seems tailor made for this type of broad silliness as she absorbs Peter Parker levels of bad luck and indignities even before she manages to score the ultimate good/bad scenario of scooping over three billion dollars off a ticket that isn’t even hers. Having everyone around her roll right over her feelings and putting her in a god-awful gold track suit that would turn King Midas blind, the actress always seems to find a good groove when playing the slumped shouldered but likeable shlub who magnetically attracts metallic shit to her with a minimum of effort thanks to stuff like Jumanji: The Next Level and Shang Chi.
Oddly faring a little less well is Cena, who as of late seems to have single handedly cornered the market of giant, white, goofy tanks who are remarkably good natured despite the fact they probably could crush a man’s skull in his hands, however his daffy, Ninja Turtle-obsessed Noel only really seems to be a variation of Peacemaker but with all the rough edges sanded down and it feels mote often than not that he’s playing it safe as he continues to embody his signature role of an overly cheerful face smasher.
While there’s a range of other actors on show (it’s nice to see Simu Liu back on screen with Awkwafina as well patiently wait for a second Shang Chi), not to mention the expected glut of cameos that come with modern comedies (Hello Sean William Scott! Hello Mchine Gun Kelly!), there’s a sense that Feig is more interested in teaching himself how to film long, super complicated, comedy fight scenes rather than keeping the actual plot and jokes super tight.
While there’s the standard amount of expected ad-libbing that manages to bring out the requisite amount of colourful insults – Cena is described as having a face that looks like a giant ear while someone screams that MGK resembles a beautiful scarecrow – the verbal jokes score high on the chuckle meter, but there’s not much here to really get the belly laughs going. Also, despite working well purely because they’re both capable comic performers, Awkwafina and Cena (AwkwaCena?) don’t actually seem to have that much chemistry and spend a lot of their time just screaming their lines at each other in a state of panic.
However, Jackpot!’s main saving grace (aside from being a solid comedy release in a time when comedies seem all but dead) is those chaotic action scenes which make up for everything else by being maniacal, silly and very, very funny. Charlie Chaplin obviously never made a Purge movie, but if he did, the sight of Awkwafina desperately trying to get away from twin mobs of martial artists and yoga practitioners probably isn’t far off from what you’d get. The visual gags and timing is exquisite and Feig constantly gets good milage by launching stunt people into objects with the force of a cannonball and in a time where physical stunts maybe aren’t given the respect they’re due (the box office failiure of The Fall Guy, anyone?), Jackpot! goes above and beyond to deliver a near, unbroken string of entertaining brawls that are constantly spiteful, but never out and out cruel.
Yes, the childish satire is nothing than an excuse for extended comedy prat falling – but it’s good comedy prat falling and if nothing else, we have the sight of Cena fighting off assailants with Awkwafina lashed to his back like she’s in a baby carrier and I’d consider that a comedy jackpot even if nobody else does…
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