The ceiling’s pretty low on the action comedy category — a genre whose biggest hits tend to pepper anemic shootouts with wisecracks from former “Saturday Night Live” stars. With Prime Video entry “Jackpot!,” director Paul Feig switches up the formula, crafting stunt-intensive set-pieces where the action itself makes you laugh. That could mean anything from Awkwafina hiding out among the wax figures of a tacky Hollywood museum to the sight of ex-wrestler John Cena taking on a room of black belts with the “Crazy Rich Asians” breakout strapped to his back.
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Why are people trying to kill Awkwafina? “Jackpot!” asks audiences to buy in to a clever but often illogical premise about a radical rule change to the California lottery. In the year 2030, the winning ticket comes with a price: The money’s only yours to keep if you can stay alive till sundown. In the meantime, winners must navigate an impromptu Hunger Games on the streets of Los Angeles, in which their winnings double as a sort of bounty, awarded to whoever’s crafty enough to kill them.
No offense to Rob Yescombe (who was named one of Variety ’s Screenwriters to Watch last year), but that idea’s about as far as he got in a sloppy screenplay that’s otherwise propped up by whatever improv the cast could bring and surprisingly funny fight scenes. Feig shows how the state’s win-lose-or-die lottery works right out of the gate, as that day’s winner (Seann William Scott) tries to outrun a greedy mob. The rules seem pretty straightforward, which makes it hard to swallow that Awkwafina doesn’t know what’s going on when her number is drawn.
The comic plays it equal parts ornery and oblivious as Katie Kim, a former child actor who’s not crazy about having to perform again, but has no other choice after her deadbeat stage dad ran off with all her earnings. During her first (amusingly humiliating) audition, she discovers the winning ticket in her pocket, accidentally activates it with her thumb, and the next thing she knows, she’s become an instant celebrity: the most valuable person in all of L.A.
Lucky for her, a freelance bodyguard named Noel (Cena) bursts through the wall, like a musclebound Kool-Aid Man, and starts knocking heads. He’s the near-future equivalent of an ambulance-chasing lawyer — and a welcome ally in helping Katie avoid her “fans” (as the movie calls them). Turns out, not everyone wants to kill her. But like any good talent agent, this guy expects a 10% commission.
There are traces running all through “Jackpot!” of a more pointed Hollywood satire, as if Yescombe or Feig or someone along the way wanted to skewer Americans’ obsession with becoming rich and famous. Weirdly enough, Katie doesn’t want either. She didn’t buy the ticket, but found it in a borrowed pair of gold lamé sweatpants. Stranger still, the movie seems to have landed on the word “weird” at the same moment that VP candidate Tim Walz made it the insult du jour, adding an unexpected resonance to some of the movie’s weaker jabs.
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“Jackpot!” demands a trickier kind of physical comedy than Awkwafina’s been asked to deliver before, and even though her character is supposed to read as clumsy and incompetent, it takes considerable skill to pull off the routines that action choreographer James Young has in store for her. Given his WWE background, Cena is far more accustomed to making fake fighting seem entertaining, but once again reminds of his good-sport sense of humor (as the scene-stealer did earlier this year in “Ricky Stanicky”).
Thirteen years ago, Feig struck comedy gold with the Judd Apatow-produced “Bridesmaids,” but he’s subsequently been hit-and-miss, trying to edge his way into other genres (most recently with YA fantasy flop “The School for Good and Evil”). Fitting neatly between “The Heat” and 2016’s “Ghostbusters” reboot, “Jackpot!” finds the dapper director squarely in his comfort zone, falling back on some of the tricks that worked so well in “Bridesmaids,” minus the underlying relatability of that film’s brilliant screenplay.
The most obvious of those strategies comes in casting, which he entrusts to secret weapon Allison Jones, who’s been unearthing funny people for him and Apatow as far back as “Freaks & Geeks.” (It was Jones who brought Seth Rogen and Melissa McCarthy into the mix.) Here she delivers half a dozen diverse, laugh-out-loud supporting comics to the ensemble, from Katie’s insensitive/homicidal Airbnb host (Ayden Mayeri) to the shady leader of the Lottery Protection Agency (Simu Liu), who’s looking to steal Noel’s fee for himself. She even enlists Machine Gun Kelly, who proves a self-deprecating good sport in playing a panic-room-ready version of himself.
The “Jackpot!” script is full of twists, few of which will come as a surprise, so why spoil them here? Meanwhile, that puts the burden on how well Awkwafina and company can punch up their scenes. “Jackpot!” winds up being one of those movies where you can tell the actors tried dozens of jokes and the editor went with the best ones, although the outtake-loaded end credits suggest funnier options often existed. In a way, it’s fitting that Katie’s survival depends on how well she can think on her feet, considering how heavily the film also relies on improvisation. It’s that very skill that stands to make Awkwafina a millionaire.
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