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.
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