Starring John Cena, Awkwafina, Simu Liu, Ayden Mayeri and Donald Elise Watkins

Directed by Paul Feig

Katie (Awkwafina) is returning to the acting life after spending years caring for her mom. But LA is very different than the last time she was here. Post-economic crash, the city lottery offers life-changing jackpots with a price. Survive long enough with the winning ticket, as the entire city hunts you.  She’s going to need help. She gets Noel (John Cena).

About half Jackpot is spectacular. The opening gag featuring Seann William Scott, the cheerful dystopian tone, and every time Cena and Awkwafina are bouncing off each are all incredibly good fun. The action is frequent, inventive and neatly slides between very funny and brutal in ways that you’re going to see riffed on for years to come. Noel and Katie, belted together, fighting a karate studio and a yoga class, is a really funny, weird scene and there’s plenty more to come. A zombie like run at Machine Gun Kelly’s panic room is also great, especially as Kelly plays himself and clearly gets the joke. There’s also a superb running gag character beat where Noel refuses to kill people that gives Cena some very welcome, and successful, pathos to play with. In these scenes, and the ones they share with Simu Liu’s wonderfully slick and cold private security specialist the movie shows it’s teeth and it’s so much better for that.

The rest of the time this is a satire with a small ‘s’ and, for once, that’s not good news. The dystopia of LA is… basically modern day LA (or Atlanta…) with occasional comedy gunfire and the rage the movie seethes with is never quite allowed to explode. A lot of that is down to the lead. Katie is a great character played by a great actress (and if you’re scoffing at Awkwafina being talented, then you haven’t seen Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell or Shang Chi) but there’s not quite enough there. She should be likable, plucky, determined and furious, all things Awkwafina can do with her eyes closed. Instead she’s reduced to yelling her way through most action scenes and her emotional journey never quite coalesces. I’m loathe to say ‘this needed another script revision’ but it really plays like that. Cena, visibly honing his ‘deeply principled human golden retriever who is very good at violence’ schtick is spectacularly good here but Noel feels the same way. A great idea, not quite in focus.

It’s a shame because along with Ayden Mayeri and Donald Elise Watkins as the wonderfully inept, and violent, lead jackpot hunters, they do great work.

Verdict: This is a good movie that could have been a great movie. Enjoy it, because it’s a fun movie. But if you want to see this idea taken to its magnificent extremes, check out Crowded, a three volume comic that does everything Jackpot does, and everything it doesn’t. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

 

https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/crowded