Lottery Ticket

One thing comes to mind after watching this movie. Redbox! If you must see this movie, please don't spend $10 and 2 hours on this. Wait for the DVD release.

While I am happy that some folks are working and got a check for making this movie, this story is not worth full price. This is a story of what would happen if a young guy won the lottery in the ghetto. Word gets out about Kevin's (Bow Wow) winning, but because it is the 4th of July weekend he can't redeem the ticket until after the long weekend. So he has to try to hold on to the ticket and dodge gold-digging girls, thugs and drug dealers.

The storyline was predictable and the premise is weak. I guess I am supposed to care how a young man from the projects would spend his winnings, but I don't. There are some serious after school special undertones here. The writers are trying to tug the heart strings and the conscious. The heartstrings by highlighting the good girl/bad girl ideology will Kevin choose the good girl Stacie or the hot gold digger. Attempting to make the audience think, does money really solve all your problems? As was said earlier…don't care.

There are a lot of the stereotypical 'hood characters; the bible thumping grandmother, the local gangster, the hot hood rat, the good girl, the loyal best friend and the wise old person. None of the characters were interesting. If you miss The Lottery Ticket, you won't miss much.

www.rivareviews.com

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.

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

While "Lottery Ticket" is a comedy movie, it wasn't all that funny. Don't get me wrong here, because the movie is still entertaining enough for what it turned out to be, but it just wasn't all that funny, and it lacked certain elements that would make it stand out from numerous other comedies in the genre.

The story in "Lottery Ticket" is about young Kevin who lives with his grandmother in a project housing. When he happens to win 370 million dollars in a lottery, things are about to change. And not everything changes for the better.

There were some good enough aspects to the movie, such as what happens to a person when winning a ridiculous amount such as 370 million dollars, and what happens to the people and everything and everyone in the nearby vicinity when finding out about such a winning. But it was just all hindered by the predictability of the movie.

"Lottery Ticket" is a very predictable movie. You know what will happen a long time before it does happen on the screen, and that predictability was a cumbersome anchor around the movie, slowing it down.

The acting in the movie was quite alright, and they had some good names to the cast list; which included Loretta Devine, Terry Crews, Keith David. I will also says that both Shad Moss and Brandon T. Jackson were actually doing quite alright in carrying the movie.

If you enjoy comedies, then there are far better and more amusing choices available in the comedy genre. "Lottery Ticket" is the type of movie that you will most likely watch once, then never return to it again, as it just doesn't have contents to support multiple viewings.

My rating of "Lottery Ticket" is a slightly less than mediocre four out of ten stars.