Lottery Ticket

Lottery Ticket

In addition to millions of dollars, when someone wins the lottery, they also win greedy relatives, continual litigation and multiple lightening strikes.

Fortunately, the lucky ticket-holder in this comedy only has to cope with a vindictive ex-con.

When word gets out that Kevin (Bow Wow) won the $370 million jackpot, his neighbourhood comes a-knocking.

Unable to collect his winnings for 3 days, Kevin must keep the winning ticket away from the perils of spontaneous prosperity, i.e. sexy sycophants, a loan shark (Keith David) and a local thug.

Fortunately, Kevin has an impoverished ex-boxer (Ice Cube) in his corner.

While it attempts to evoke nostalgia for old school neighbourhood-centric comedies, Lottery Ticket is a lousy torchbearer: the casting is second-rate, the characters are typecasts, and the jokes are tired.

And besides, regardless of who claims the winning ticket, in any lottery the manufacturer of the giant novelty cheque is always the winner. (Red Light)

3.6 rating? Must be my white brethren. The movie, as a morality tale, clearly makes the cut. Even though nefarious characters lend a hand, the overall message is still pretty clear: You need the community to see you through. Who's going to help you through the greed and missteps of your neighborhood.. Opie?? Sure, there were some things that were unrealistic (oh, gimme a break scenes). But the film still entertained, and communicated the eternal truth: that winning the lottery doesn't change you, it changes the people around you. Ice Cube was great, as was the entire cast. Hats off to the director, actors, and writer of this film.

Now this is far from being a good movie, but I find the score people are giving it is a bit harsh...sort of. I mean yeah if you seen the trailer to this movie, you basically seen the whole movie. But watching how it gets to those points was kinda fun to watch, although most of the obnoxious characters just really started to get annoying. And the stupidity of some of the characters got really annoying, I mean at first I decided to just go with it, but the stupidity was just too much at times. I will say the main highlight of this film was Terry Crews, love that guy in just about any movie he is in. Rental at best, if your in your teens and with a group of friends it's okay as well. Not as terrible as I thought it would be.

5.5/10

Lottery Ticket is an interesting film, which however did not live up to certain expectation for its film audience.

The main characters are somewhat relatable; Wacky Friend in Benny, Wise Female Friend in Stacie and God fearing Grandmother in Mrs Carson. However, the main character Kevin Carson played by Bow Wow, was not the right casting in my opinion. He lacks some acting experience, and although on the surface delivers good laugh and portrays our hero effective, he lacks enough depth to play the key emotions change of the character.

The movie does deliver many good laughs though, but does portray a horrible stereotype of the black community living in the projects - which is to the distaste of many audience members.

Overall, the film is a mini Tyler Perry film however, falls short by quite a lot. Nonetheless, it is a good watch for a good laugh of stereotypes and at times poor acting.

Notable acting mentions go to: Naturi Naughton, Ice Cube, Teairra Mari, Loretta Devine & Gbenga Akinnagbe

Lottery Ticket is much a film with two likable lead characters, but it has such a weak and predictable plot you wonder why you even care about the events in it. I admit that when I saw the trailer I was very interested in seeing it because it looked like F Gary Gray's fantastic urban Comedy called Friday and it's sequels. Hell, it even has Ice Cube that was in everyone of those film. It's a buddy film, an urban film, and a plot that's not the worst. I dig all three of those things.

Bow Wow is a decent actor, but his music is less than impressive. After being less than impressed with his album New Jack City Part 2, I wasn't racing to see/hear anything Bow Wow for quite a while. Then this film comes along to grab me, shake me, and say "Hey! This is a film that is in the spirit of Friday! See it, Steve!" And I obeyed. Bow Wow does a fair job at acting, but I'd rather watch him than have him rap with music in the background. Lets just say, he's a tame Chris Tucker.

The plot surfaces around High School graduate Kevin (Bow Wow) who works at a Foot Locker and desperately wants to own his own shoe design business. Living in an urban neighborhood, he doesn't have the cash to send himself to Design School and his Jesus freak of a grandmother wants him to grow up and "live in the real world".

After a run in with the town bully and after disastrous results as, Kevin is sent to buy a lottery ticket for his grandmother where we get the best part of the movie - T-Pain. T-Pain's music is better than Bow Wow's, but not perfect. Only this time it was the opposite. I didn't like Bow Wow's music, but I still watched the film. I didn't like T-Pain's music in Freaknik: The Musical, but still saw his film. Where's the sign that "Entering Paradox"?

You can guess the rest; he plays the numbers his grandma wants, then takes a fortune cookie message's lucky numbers and plays them. He winds up winning the jackpot of $370,000,000, and the only trouble he faces now is keeping possession of the ticket over the Fourth of July weekend without it slipping into the wrong hands. Kevin then gets a look at what money does to people, and talks to people that he may have never walked past if he didn't have a $370 million ticket to his name.

Lottery Ticket has it's heart in the right place, but it lacks greatly in trying to unique. The plot is surely decent, but isn't utilized in a fresh, new way. Then again what movie is? It reminds me much of a film I reviewed earlier this year called The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. You know the company isn't going to lose out on everything. Even if the chips are down, so how, some unrealistic miracle comes around to save everyone. Lottery Ticket doesn't hit the jackpot, but it deserves a "free ticket".

Starring: Bow Wow, Brandon T. Jackson, Naturi Naughton, Loretta Devine, Terry Crews, Ice Cube, and Gbenga Akinnagbe. Directed by: Erik White.