Fair or not, streaming movies often have lower expectations and a lower threshold for what is considered a good or bad movie. Sometimes known as the "Netflix bump," a movie that would likely otherwise receive a negative review gets a softer review because you could watch it from the comfort of your home, not having to drive to a theater or pay for tickets and snacks, making it overall experience better, even if the movie itself wasn't that good. But even with those caveats, Jackpot!, Amazon's latest Prime Video release, still doesn't come close to measuring up in any sense of the phrase.
What beloved comedy TV show or movie do you find painfully unfunny?
Jackpot! takes place in a near-future Los Angeles, 2030. The new government has created a huge lottery. It works much like Powerball or any other lottery game, but with one very important catch: if someone manages to kill the winner (no guns, no bullets, otherwise no rules), that person legally claims the jackpot prize. On the heels of the Great Depression of 2026, the public is more than desperate for money. So when the latest winner is announced, the knives come out, literally.
Katie Kim (Awkwafina) moves to Los Angeles to try to break back into acting after a successful stint as a child actor. When she accidentally finds herself with the winning ticket, she faces a literal fight for her life. To survive the entire town coming after her, she teams up with Noel Cassidy (John Cena), a lottery protection agent who protects lottery winners for a share of the jackpot winnings.
Jackpot! is at least an original idea (although, yes, you can draw comparisons to the Purge series if you really want to), so it has that going for it. It's an absurd premise that doesn't require you to ask too many questions – not that there would be any answers to be found anyway, but it's gross. It begins by giving the audience some basic background and context of the current landscape, and then jumps right in. No fluff, no unnecessary extended introduction to explain everything. So that's good, a good start at least. Unfortunately, it goes downhill from there.
