Lottery Ticket Review: A Lot of Heart, Little Finesse

Lottery Ticket is a film with heart and a charming cast, but little else in the tank.

The premise of the story is simple: Kevin Carson (Bow Wow), a boy from the projects, wins an unbelievable amount of money in the lottery, but can’t redeem the ticket for three days. Not only does everyone want a piece of the action, some violent thugs are willing to kill him for it.

Kevin Carson is a poor boy with big dreams – to go to design school and one day create his own line of sneakers. At the moment he’s stuck working at Foot Locker and helping his grandmother (Loretta Devine) make ends meet. He does his best to stay out of the underbelly of his world, keeping his nose clean and working for his money.

He gets fired after a fiasco at  Foot Locker when some local thugs who are out to get him, led by ex-con Lorenzo (Gbenga Akinnagbe), try to steal hundreds of dollars worth of shoes from the store. He decides to drown his sorrows over Chinese food with his best gal pal Stacey (Naturi Naughton) and pockets a fortune cookie fortune.  On his way home he decides to play the numbers on the back of the fortune slip.  When he wakes up the next day, he finds that he’s won over of 300 million bucks.

After issuing a warning to his grandmother to tell no one, he and his best friend Benny (Brandon T. Jackson) head off to redeem the ticket. The problem? It’s 4^th of July weekend and the offices are closed until Tuesday.

Here’s where things begin to go juuuuuust a bit off to the right of believable. Me? I have a ticket in my pocket worth 300 million and know for a fact people would kill me for it…I don’t go home. Not until Tuesday, not until all of America knows who that money belongs to. Kevin? He goes home, and finds that Grandma got drunk and spilled the beans to the neighborhood gossip. Now everyone wants a piece of Kevin, including the hot girl (Teairra Mari) who didn’t give him the time of day 24 hours before and the “Godfather of the projects” Sweet Tee (Keith David).

Then there’s the mysterious Mr. Washington (Ice Cube) who lives underground and hasn’t been out in public in 22 years – and only speaks to Kevin. Along the way he finds out what true friendship is, learns not to judge a book by its cover, and discovers he’s in love with his best friend.

The question is – will Kevin hang onto his ticket, and his life, until Tuesday?

I’m not going to spoil anything. I’m also not going to recommend you pay $10 to find out.

My main issue with the film is in the character of Kevin Carson. He begins the movie disillusioned about life but determined to play by the rules – even if it means giving up his dreams. Everyone is talking about buying a lottery ticket, what they would do with the money, but not Kevin. He proclaims how the lottery is designed to keep poor people poor, taking their money and selling them empty dreams.

Then he wins the money.

He becomes a completely different person. He’s suspicious of everyone, even his best friend. He borrows $100K from a gangster and spends it on tennis shoes, food, jewelry, Hummers, etc without a second thought. He goes home with the hot girl (though, to his credit he runs like the wind when she refuses to use a condom). I had whiplash from how fast his character changed.

I suppose perhaps the writers were trying to illustrate how money changes a person. I agree that it does, but the message here comes across ridiculously heavy-handed. I felt like someone beat me over the head with a life lesson stick. It’s called finesse, writers. Use it. Love it.

He also apparently became the dumbest person alive. If an ex-con who was willing to seriously hurt and/or kill me over a pair of sneakers knew I had $300M lottery ticket in my pocket there’s no way you’d find me in public. There’s Kevin, though, wandering around all alone, at night  – and then he’s all pissed off and shocked when he gets knocked out and robbed. Duh.

The Mr. Washington character is by far the most interesting, as random as he is. An ex-boxer who’s career ended when he himself was robbed and shot in the neighborhood, he chose solitude over being part of a community that betrayed him.

Overall the movie’s heart is in the right place but it’s unbelievable. The writing makes the mistake I hate more than anything – introducing characters or situations for no other reason than we need them to move the story. It wasn’t funny, it was over the top, but the message is an important one.

I’d say you could wait for video. That’s just one gal’s opinion.

Photo by David Lee – © 2010 Alcon Film Fund, LLC.