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)

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.

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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

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.

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