BOW WOW stars as Kevin Carson in The Lottery Ticket. (Handout)
Sometimes it helps to not expect much from a comedy.
Lottery Ticket -- an African-American-skewed comedy in which the rapper Bow Wow plays a kid who must hang onto a winning ticket for a whole long weekend in the 'hood -- sounds like drivel from the Hollywood stereotype machine, produced by white guys.
And to an extent, it is. There are women looking to become NBA "baby mamas." Any number of gangstas looking to bust caps in a--es, brawls over the latest shipment of Air Jordans, and a James Brown-ish Baptist minister (Mike Epps) with a100 decibel give-me-money sermon. (Plus a 100% absence of white people, as if someone invented a race-based neutron bomb -- which actually doesn't bother me too much, considering all the movies and TV shows where the reverse is true.)
But still, if you're laughing, they must be doing something right. And in the first act, at least, Lottery Ticket has a manic comic energy, courtesy of Bow Wow's frenzied portrayal of a kid-on-the-run from a horde of screaming "new friends." When word gets around that he's holding a $370-million ticket, he is chased through alleyways and ducking through open windows like The Beatles in A Hard Day's Night.
At this point, I briefly had the impression that Lottery Ticket would be something more satirical than it is, instead of the warmed-over Tyler Perry-esque homily about money and values and true friendship that it becomes.
Kevin Carson (Bow Wow) is a Footlocker salesman, who takes static from his street friends because, well, he has a job (his manager has a nasal Urkel voice, further indicating the deleterious effect gainful employment has on one's blackness). Unfortunately, a recently released felon named Lorenzo (Gbenga Akinnagbe) sees Kevin's sucker job as a ticket to free Air Jordans for him and his homies. Thus does the principled Kevin become a marked man.
Between running afoul of "street code" (his refusal to hand over the shoes has him labeled a "snitch"), he runs errands for his sweet gran (Loretta Devine) and for a mysterious hermit who lives under a sewer grate (Ice Cube). His only allies are his best friends Benny (Brandon T. Jackson) and Stacie (Naturi Naughton).
On an errand to buy his gran's lottery ticket, the stressed Kevin decides to buy one of his own from the numbers on a fortune cookie. When Kevin and Benny head downtown to cash it in, they're told by a janitor the place is closed until after the July 4 long weekend. Meanwhile, grandma has let slip the news to an uncle (Charlie Murphy), and everyone in the 'hood soon knows Kevin is soon to be rich.
The 'Godfather' of the neighbourhood (Keith David) gives him $100,000 and a bodyguard, scores of layabouts offer to be his posse, the hottest girl in school offers to sleep with him provided they don't use a condom. And Lorenzo just wants to beat him to a pulp and take the ticket outright.
The chase scenes -- and there are many -- are well shot with deft comic timing. The rest you can see coming all the way from uptown.
