Lottery Ticket

Admit this to yourself, at some point in your life you wondered what it would be like to be a millionaire. Would you take a vacation? Quit your job? Purchase a company? Waste it all on wine and women? Well, any way you look at it most people would start spending immediately. However, in the case of the barely 18 Kevin (Bow Wow), he has to wait a whole weekend before he can claim $370 million to his name. A lot can happen in three days which offers the plot to this mediocre farce of a movie.

Kevin has graduated from high school but can only support himself and his grandmother (Loretta Devine) through a part-time job at Foot Locker. However, due to an attempted robbery of the place by the local criminal Lorenzo (Gbenga Akinnagbe), Kevin loses his job. With no future and friends he doesn’t want to listen to, he takes his last dollar and purchases a lottery ticket for the hell of it. What he doesn’t realize is that he actually bought the winning slip, and his future suddenly seems very bright. The problem is, Grandma wants everybody to know but Kevin knows better. See, this movie is set in Atlanta, Georgia in a small housing community mainly populated by African-Americans. Kevin already knows that the more people know about this, the sooner it will get back to Lorenzo who will predictably try to steal it.

Judging from the previews, I really wanted to see this movie based on its promises of being a coming-of-age comedy with positive life messages. Instead it’s all just one cliché to another. Brandon T. Jackson (Tropic Thunder) plays Kevin’s best friend and gets the best lines including a chance to move to dramatic territory with a rooftop speech on the poor and unfortunate people in America. Beyond these two characters, everybody is a stereotype. Grandma, Lorenzo, a gangster named Sweet Tee (Keith David), his driver (Terry Crews), a hypocrite preacher (Mike Epps), a beautiful but cold-hearted golddigger (Teairra Mari), and last but not least an ex-boxer hermit played with gusto by Ice Cube. If you’ve seen any of Tyler Perry’s movies then this formula is all too familiar.

On the other hand, I couldn’t hate this movie. The ethics involved with winning enough money to be set for life are definitely examined to detail. The best example of this is when the golddigger Nikki first blows off Kevin’s advances one day, to suddenly want to have naughty sex with him the next just because he has cash to spend. They go on a fancy date and later get ready to make love, but when the issue of condoms comes up her true intentions show through. She only wanted him to get her pregnant just so she could collect his child support checks. Ouch. Of course Kevin does get with the other, much nicer girl and this sends a bold message about safe sex. See? This movie isn’t entirely brainless.

“Lottery Ticket” is not for everyone, and honestly could have been a lot better. Even the ending is a cliché onto itself with a neighborhood Block-Party (come on, be original!) where Ice Cube saves the day and Kevin buys a park for his neighborhood. If you enjoyed “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” or “Friday” then you may enjoy parts of this, others look elsewhere.