And his name is John Cena!

Jackpot is quickly becoming one of my favorite movies of 2023 and it doesn’t entirely surprise me that the film has about a 32% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It doesn’t shock me at all that the soulless weenies from the usual suspects hated this film. Let’s get into it.

Shockingly directed by Paul Feig and written by Rob Yescombe. Jackpot had a writer? Well that explains why it was far better than Feig’s 2016 Ghostbusters improv dumpster fire. Yescombe recently wrote Arizona Sunshine 2, the zombie VR video game, as well as the screenplay to 2021’s Outside The Wire. The film stars Awkwafina as Katie, a girl who moves to LA to resume her career as an actress only to find herself in an shithole where everyone is murdering each other, crap drips from the ceiling, and the economy is in shambles while a select few continue getting richer. In other words it’s like LA of today but 2030.

Through a series of unfortunate events, Katie wins the lottery which would normally be great but this is the LA lottery where the winner has to survive until sundown to claim their prize, otherwise the person who kills them wins it. She is saved by two ton walking monkey Noel (John Cena), who merely wants 10% of her winnings, and the two escape her horde of fans to survive as long as humanly possible.

The primary antagonist of this movie is Ayden Mayeri who absolutely steals the show as Katie’s bitchy AirBnB host and also the woman who is desperately trying to kill her for the lottery money alongside her boyfriend DJ Donald (Donald Elise Watkins). Mayer is in a lot of things, but she really deserves to be in a lot of bigger, higher profile things. Like the next Jumanji film, or a really popular animated movie like Despicable Me 5 as a main character. Something like that.

Jackpot is nearly two hours of Katie and Noel getting chased from scene to scene as we learn more about the two and why Katie doesn’t trust John Cena (maybe it’s because she can’t see him?). Then they get caught by the crowd and have a fight sequence and get chased to the next scene for it all to happen again. I like movies that create their own little, slightly different worlds. A lot in the film is very grounded in reality, outside of the lottery. Then you have little things like Noel calling in a “phone strike” which inexplicably blows up everyone’s phones in a non-lethal way.

Oh and John Cena has a gun that shoots wasp venom that knocks people out, which is funny when you consider that Noel’s big thing is that he tries to be as non-lethal as possible. He goes out of his way to make sure the people he knocks out don’t choke on their own tongue. But it’s not like he’s exactly asking the people he shoots if they have wasp allergies before he potentially kills them through choking to death. Maybe he carries a bee sting kit on him, actually that’s probably a good assumption.

Machine Gun Kelly is in this movie as himself, and my favorite Murray Hill is here as Johnny Grand. Simu Liu is here as Louis Lewis, a man who runs a company that promises to keep winners alive for a cut of their winnings but may be more nefarious. It’s always nice seeing Liu and Awkwafina on the screen together.

Ultimately Jackpot is a silly movie that was a fun time for me to sit back and watch. I actually enjoy Awkwafina in movies despite how much the public seems to hate her. For a fantastic Awkwafina movie, I recommend The Farewell which somehow I haven’t reviewed yet. Better get on that. If you hate Awkwafina as a person this movie might be for you too because she spends a good amount of the film absolutely getting the crap kicked out of her by a mob of murderous people.

That role in The Little Mermaid has probably earned her a momentary dip in Hell though. My offer on that rotisserie chicken is still open. Also Machine Gun Kelly is just straight up charming in everything he appears in.

Rating: A-