Imagine, just for a moment, if Los Angeles were inhabited by hundreds, if not thousands, of people desperate for wealth and fame. People so desperate that they willingly play a lottery in which the winner becomes a city-wide target until sundown.
Jackpot!, Paul Feig's latest joint, holds up a cheap mirror to the city of dreams, offering jaded satire under the guise of an action-comedy. The film fills its runtime with obvious quips and a nearly exclusive use of one-liners indicative of the worst of millennial humour — "Some people think this is dystopian… But these people are no fun," the opening crawl of the film concludes. Neither is Jackpot!
In 2030, Katie Kim (Awkwafina) is the latest winner. Chased by an army of L.A. residents, caricatures of the working class in their cheap-looking costumes, she stumbles through stilted action sequences and unfunny reactions: "Swords?!" she shouts, when a knife is thrown and almost reaches her.
When bodyguard-for-hire Noel (John Cena) literally crashes through the ceiling to help her survive the day, the WWE icon is relegated to 100 minutes of uninspired fight scenes over a painfully straightforward soundtrack (the use of LCD Soundsystem's "Us v Them" during a car chase may be the film's worst offence).
With Jackpot!, Feig and co. aren't picking low-hanging fruit; they're grabbing the rotted citrus on the ground with jokes ranging from acerbic to tasteless. As Katie rides a bus through LA, Weezer's hit "Beverly Hills" plays as homeless people cook hot dogs over a comically small trashcan (an example of Jackpot!'s haphazard and low-effort production design) while the rich walk right over them. "Great, they're rebooting Barbie," Katie says, while walking into a hallway full of blonde women waiting for an audition, playing for laughs that will never manifest.
Those archetypal hopefuls, along with the hardworking folks of L.A. chasing down Katie and the American Dream, are Jackpot!'s biggest jokes. Considering the film will be streaming on Prime Video, whose parent company exploits the poor and the working class, the film's attempts at an ironic approach to violence and economic hardships feel dystopian, and not in a "fun" way. But, somehow, the ability to break into Hollywood — something arguably more dependent on luck than skill — is still achievable in the world screenwriter Rob Yescombe concocts for the film. With good fortune and an ex-mercenary, even the most unambitious can become billionaires, and the system won't ever change.
A multi-million dollar product that mocks the people who watch it and enables the industry it claims to deride, Jackpot! may have to contend with Borderlands for the title of worst movie of the summer. Similar to Feig's other recent films, Jackpot! is no winner. I, perhaps, was its biggest loser.