Watch The Lottery Ticket online on Megavideo for free
===>Click here to watch The Lottery Ticket on megavideo for free<===
In a summer full of absurd geekshows lacking coherence, Erik White's The Lottery Ticket is the closest thing we've got to a mainstream human comedy. If you scour the arthouse you can find Get Low, The Kids Are Alright, and Cyrus, but for populist, multiplex bellylaughs with an empathetic edge, you could do much worse than this tale of an 18 yr old Georgia kid from the projects who just got a 370 million dollar windfall that his kooky neighbors all want a piece of. Not everything in the film works, and it ultimately gets its broad comedy tangled and twisted together with the harsher realities of urban street life, but give White and his team credit for seeing the premise through to its wacky end.
Kevin Carson, the kid with the wining ticket who can't cash-in til the end of a long Fourth of July weekend, must navigate the wily and weird inhabitants of his low income neighborhood while trying to keep his own moral footing. Played with enthusiastic verve by Bow Wow, Kevin has been cut from the mold of the guileless heroes of 40's era social comedies. He should be well aware of the ravening wolves hidden in goofball clothing—afterall he has lived and dealt with them all his life—but the story requires the money to melt his brain and throw him into the orbit of a perfect bin of loonies. It works because of Bow Wow's earnest, and the sly charm that Brandon T. Jackson brings to Benny, Kevin's best bud, and not least of all because of the outsized, overcharged personalities hiding out in the hood.
Some critics seem to have missed the point, and only oust the film as a conglomeration of dopey sentiment, played out gags and hurtful stereotypes. To an extent each of these criicisms is valid, but Whilte and producer Ice Cube make them work in their favor by delivering honesty into the mix. For one, there's never an indictment over the pursuance of the money, and although greed motivates the screwball plot of the latter two-thirds, money isn't seen as an automatic evil. There's even some wish fulfillment in the way Kevin attempts to squeeze some fun and decadence out of his cash while still holding the bulk for personal betterment. The gags are old, that's true, but they have been carefully chosen and delivered in clean, energetic strokes via White's direction; Lottery Ticket builds clear bridges between itself and films like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Waking Ned Devine, and that gold standard of ghetto comedy, Friday.
Which leads us to the stereotype issue, which is a bit a wild goose chase in a movie like this. The foul-mouthed classic Friday was take-no-prisoners on that front, but it was also placing those stereotypes in a rougher urban jungle where drugs, violence, and rampant sex were all part of the tapestry. The Lottery Ticket has the feel of a fable, and while it's presentation of the projects is reminiscent of Friday, those other elements have faded into the background, or are drastically diminished. What gets left behind are a rogues' gallery of obvious ‘types'; Kieth David as as sleazy ghetto godfather, Mike Epps as a dubious minister, Charlie Murphy as the local loudmouth, and Loretta Devine as the Godzilla of grandmothers. Leading the pack, with gray-dusted hair and John Witherspoons brow lines, is Ice Cube, once the fresh-faced goof of Friday, now the aged, reclusive boxer who gets to play Yoda and Bill Cosby to Bow Wow's Kevin.
Yes, each of thes people is a caricature of certain expected, exposed social traits that have been long linked to poor, close-knit neighborhoods like the one Kevin lives in. What The Lottery Ticket does in associating itself with the now-dated comedies of yesteryear– that gave us middle class suburbia as homogeneous cultural hub– is turn that notion on its head. Anytime you have so many people living in similar conditions, sharing the same hardships, joys, and mudanity as the rest of their neighbors, stereotypes are only a stone's throw away. Instead of training us to see them and identify them, Lottery Ticket expands them, throws them in the mix, and rattles on about the business of shepherding them into it's sincere notion of community.
Despite the bulletproof concept and generous wackiness of the script, The Lottery Ticket never quite coalesces as a cohesive whole. Still, it delivers what it promises. You will no doubt see better, smarter movies this year. Depending on your movie appettite, you may even seen better ones this weekend. But for a funny—and fun—popcorn munching time out at the movies, The Lottery Ticket is well worth playing.
===>Click here to watch The Lottery Ticket on megavideo for free<===
In a summer full of absurd geekshows lacking coherence, Erik White's The Lottery Ticket is the closest thing we've got to a mainstream human comedy. If you scour the arthouse you can find Get Low, The Kids Are Alright, and Cyrus, but for populist, multiplex bellylaughs with an empathetic edge, you could do much worse than this tale of an 18 yr old Georgia kid from the projects who just got a 370 million dollar windfall that his kooky neighbors all want a piece of. Not everything in the film works, and it ultimately gets its broad comedy tangled and twisted together with the harsher realities of urban street life, but give White and his team credit for seeing the premise through to its wacky end.
Kevin Carson, the kid with the wining ticket who can't cash-in til the end of a long Fourth of July weekend, must navigate the wily and weird inhabitants of his low income neighborhood while trying to keep his own moral footing. Played with enthusiastic verve by Bow Wow, Kevin has been cut from the mold of the guileless heroes of 40's era social comedies. He should be well aware of the ravening wolves hidden in goofball clothing—afterall he has lived and dealt with them all his life—but the story requires the money to melt his brain and throw him into the orbit of a perfect bin of loonies. It works because of Bow Wow's earnest, and the sly charm that Brandon T. Jackson brings to Benny, Kevin's best bud, and not least of all because of the outsized, overcharged personalities hiding out in the hood.
Some critics seem to have missed the point, and only oust the film as a conglomeration of dopey sentiment, played out gags and hurtful stereotypes. To an extent each of these criicisms is valid, but Whilte and producer Ice Cube make them work in their favor by delivering honesty into the mix. For one, there's never an indictment over the pursuance of the money, and although greed motivates the screwball plot of the latter two-thirds, money isn't seen as an automatic evil. There's even some wish fulfillment in the way Kevin attempts to squeeze some fun and decadence out of his cash while still holding the bulk for personal betterment. The gags are old, that's true, but they have been carefully chosen and delivered in clean, energetic strokes via White's direction; Lottery Ticket builds clear bridges between itself and films like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Waking Ned Devine, and that gold standard of ghetto comedy, Friday.
Which leads us to the stereotype issue, which is a bit a wild goose chase in a movie like this. The foul-mouthed classic Friday was take-no-prisoners on that front, but it was also placing those stereotypes in a rougher urban jungle where drugs, violence, and rampant sex were all part of the tapestry. The Lottery Ticket has the feel of a fable, and while it's presentation of the projects is reminiscent of Friday, those other elements have faded into the background, or are drastically diminished. What gets left behind are a rogues' gallery of obvious ‘types'; Kieth David as as sleazy ghetto godfather, Mike Epps as a dubious minister, Charlie Murphy as the local loudmouth, and Loretta Devine as the Godzilla of grandmothers. Leading the pack, with gray-dusted hair and John Witherspoons brow lines, is Ice Cube, once the fresh-faced goof of Friday, now the aged, reclusive boxer who gets to play Yoda and Bill Cosby to Bow Wow's Kevin.
Yes, each of thes people is a caricature of certain expected, exposed social traits that have been long linked to poor, close-knit neighborhoods like the one Kevin lives in. What The Lottery Ticket does in associating itself with the now-dated comedies of yesteryear– that gave us middle class suburbia as homogeneous cultural hub– is turn that notion on its head. Anytime you have so many people living in similar conditions, sharing the same hardships, joys, and mudanity as the rest of their neighbors, stereotypes are only a stone's throw away. Instead of training us to see them and identify them, Lottery Ticket expands them, throws them in the mix, and rattles on about the business of shepherding them into it's sincere notion of community.
Despite the bulletproof concept and generous wackiness of the script, The Lottery Ticket never quite coalesces as a cohesive whole. Still, it delivers what it promises. You will no doubt see better, smarter movies this year. Depending on your movie appettite, you may even seen better ones this weekend. But for a funny—and fun—popcorn munching time out at the movies, The Lottery Ticket is well worth playing.
===>Click here to watch The Lottery Ticket on megavideo for free<===