There is a joke that is somewhat close to reality that in Hollywood everyone has a script they want to get off the ground (or is an actor). During filming, stars are approached by technicians or the most unsuspecting colleagues asking to read something and for help. Somehow, through proximity and gratitude, several stuntmen have seemed to be able to get their projects off the ground with this. This is not necessarily the case with Jackpot!, the most-watched film on Amazon Prime Video in August 2024.

The proposal for everything in the film revolves around simplicity and a single commitment: to laugh at the absurd. It fails to achieve its objective precisely because it is “too simple”, complicating the plot even more. First, they clarify dystopia as comedy. Dystopia is precisely an “imaginary state in which people live in conditions of extreme oppression, despair or deprivation” and in Paul Feig’s film, this will become a reality in 6 years. We see the United States in extreme conditions: people suffering from hunger and need and 5 new billionaires on Wall Street. The only connection between people, whether socially or emotionally, is the financial transaction and Feig invites us to laugh at this reality (as if it were fiction).

In this scenario, the Big Lottery was set up in California in this way: the winner had to survive until sunset to collect the prize. During this short window, (almost) anything goes to kill and get the jackpot, except for using a firearm. In other words, the worst in people comes out and no one is trustworthy.

In the midst of all this, an unsuspecting Katie (Awkwafina), a former child star who was living in Michigan and didn’t follow the news in Los Angeles, lands in the city to try to get her career back on track, taking a series of blows and humiliations from a sea of ​​horrible people. Of course, she accidentally has the winning ticket of the week, and just when it’s the highest prize in history: more than three billion dollars. She, who didn’t want to gamble or be rich, finds herself in a game of cat and mouse where she ends up joining forces with the amateur protector Noel (John Cena), who negotiates to receive 10% of the total to help her live and claim the multi-billion dollar prize. The problem for Katie is: can she trust Noel or anyone other than herself?

The premise of Jackpot! would have depth when all the jokes that would be absurd: social indifference, wild capitalism, electronic surveillance straight out of the Big Brother universe, social media celebrity, greed, etc. if it were even a little original. In reality, it’s practically a remake of Killers, the 2010 film starring Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher in which he, a wanted spy, has to escape from bounty hunters in an endless series of attacks and running around. From the moment Katie is revealed as the winner, she becomes the hunted and there’s no respite until the day is over.

Awkwafina and John Cena are funny in everything they do, even though they’re the same in everything they appear in, so either you like them or you run away. That’s because the plot is just one sequence of fight scenes after another, needing to remind us all the time that it’s just the rules of the game. Yes, they try to give a minimum of depth to the two main characters by having as motivation the fact that she’s dealing with the trauma of having been deceived by her own father and he’s the reason his platoon was killed in combat, but it comes across as a boring joke. Not because the themes are serious, but because it really didn’t work as a joke.

And here lies Feig’s irony and intelligence: as he warns in the opening credits, his intention is only to entertain, even though he is throwing one of the most raw and accurate truths of our reality in our faces. And he is right, apparently. I would say that the film is simply bad, there is no chemistry between the main duo, the jokes are repeated and/or copied, the fights are not exactly well choreographed and there are no surprises. We know what each one will do and does, even the supposed recording errors in the end credits, which seem as calculated as the one used in the film. In fact, to be fair, the best joke in the entire film is in the credits when we see how Katie and Noel start to live like billionaires. Yes, even if they are corrupted in the end. Dystopia does not spare even the best souls. It could waste precious hours, but if you have some to spare: welcome to the world of nothingness.

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