‘Jackpot!’ Review: Paul Feig’s Middling Action-Comedy
Paul Feig’s Jackpot! has an interesting premise, but its content is five or perhaps ten years too late.
Has Paul Feig ever made a good movie? This is the central question that comes to mind while watching his latest action/comedy, ‘Jackpot!’ Have any of his productions stood the test of time? Looking at his filmography, one may think not, and after viewing Jackpot!, one definitely thinks so. While it contains an interesting concept rife for a fun time at the movies, Feig’s version of it is a dated and irritatingly unfunny affair that puts talented stars inside one miserably cringeworthy situation after the other.
Again, the concept itself is fun: a dystopian future that, once a year, hosts a grand lottery with a jackpot so big it’s worth killing the winner for…literally. Whoever wins the jackpot can only claim it as their true winner by sundown if they survive the day because whoever kills the winner before sundown can legally claim their jackpot. The movie opens decently (even though its inciting action scene is haphazardly edited) with appearances from Seann William Scott, Dolly de Leon, and Murray Hill, and showcases how truly sick this new society is in willing to kill the rightful winner of a lottery to gain their winnings.
But instead of further developing how inane this entire idea is, the movie cuts to aspiring actress Katie Kim (Awkwafina), who moves to Los Angeles hoping to launch a career. But as she settles into her horrendous Airbnb (and obnoxious host, Shadi, wonderfully played by Ayden Mayeri, the film’s saving grace) and gets into her audition, she accidentally activates a lottery ticket and wins, not knowing that citizens are now out to kill her.
In the film’s first incredibly playful action sequence with stunt choreography worthy of Kensuke Sonomura, Katie meets Noel (John Cena), a lottery protection agent willing to protect Katie until sundown. Their goal is simple: to survive the day and hope that Katie will pull it off or exit Los Angeles and forfeit her ticket. But it won’t be easy since everyone is looking for her, as the jackpot now stands at a whopping $3.6 billion! Does that justify killing someone to get the money? Some will say yes, others will say you’re crazy.
Feig fills the movie with as many mind-numbing action scenes as possible. Nothing tops Katie’s realization that something’s wrong, which leads to Noel’s intro, an almost graceful Prabhas-like character reveal that showcases Cena’s wrestling star talents before reminding us he’s one of the best athlete-turned-actors working today. In fact, Noel is somewhat interesting because his bit is wholly reliant on attempting to convince Katie he’ll never double-cross her and is a legitimately good person.
But what kind of good person carries a wasp venom gun and orders off a phone strike from Louis Lewis (Simu Liu) that blows up each person’s phone? Is he truly in it for himself or for Katie? This moral grey area is fun to guess, only because Cena is a seasoned performer. He knows which emotions are the right to register for Noel, a grown-up kid who loves lottery day because it allows him to become a larger-than-life badass, while still keeping the person he protects on their toes.
And while the chemistry starts off quite decently, the introduction of Liu’s character into the movie completely sinks it. Not only does his perfectly pressed white suit screams ‘bad guy!’ but the entire operation looks and feels too good to be true. But it’s there where Awkwafina has her own Senapathy moment from S. Shankar’s Indian 2, in which she cakes herself in offensive prosthetics just to make a very dated joke. It may not be as racist as in Indian 2, but the use of prosthetics by actors to portray another culture or race should be condemned in 2024. It was offensive when it was extensively used in film and television in the past, and it’s even more so now, especially when it’s played for laughs.
Paul Feig did not write Jackpot! That credit goes to Rob Yescombe, but Feig is the first in command of the picture who should make any changes necessary. The fact that he kept this egregious scene proves to me that Feig doesn’t have the comedic sensibilities to tap into the current zeitgeist and draw compelling humor that fits into our collective imagination. It also puts him lower in my already shaky esteem for the man, even if I found The Heat and Spy to be mostly enjoyable (funnily enough, I can’t stand Bridesmaids, arguably his most popular film).
But those movies had style and a sense of energy to them, aided in part by Robert Yeoman’s photography, which created vivid images for us to bask in. John Schwartzman’s clinical style in Jackpot! renders each action sequence artificial, almost as if we’re watching a behind-the-scenes reel of the movie rather than the movie itself. Everything looks too clean, too over-rehearsed, with zero sense of identity or a compelling cinematic language. Digital close-ups and no horizon lines on the frame could potentially make this movie the worst-looking of Feig’s career.
You can say what you want about the man, but he usually cares about the presentation of his films. But he’s completely given up here, offering no discernable style from a film you’d find in the dollar bin at Walmart. Feig’s imprint is completely gone, even if his old sense of humor is found through Cena and Awkwafina’s portrayals of Noel and Katie. Instead of compelling comedy, Feig’s idea of a joke is to repeatedly punch someone in the penis to put out the fire he accidentally set himself on.
And Jackpot! never gives its central concept the full exploration it should, only a surface-level one as fodder for one unfunny bump to the head after the other and action sequences that grow less playful and more mean-spirited and unimpressive. The end result is a movie that never really knows what it wants to be, led by a star-studded cast going through the motions but with little to no attachment to their protagonists. One then wonders if Feig ever made a good movie, or a comedy so memorable it stood the test of time? Perhaps Bridesmaids pioneered the genre, but is there anyone currently talking about it?