Titreenp
SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?
Rijndri
Load of rubbish!!
BroadcastChic
Excellent, a Must See
Plustown
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
david-sarkies
My first thought after watching this movie was that the lottery ticket was a lot like the One Ring from Lord of the Rings. It is not that the ticket actually had any actual power but simply by being the winning lottery ticket had a corrupting influence upon all the people around it. Anyway, this film is about a young Negro who had grown up in the hood (in fact the entire cast of this film are Negro) and is having a bad day. However, while getting his Grandmother's ticket he is convinced to buy a ticket himself and uses the numbers that he was given in a fortune cookie. Turns out he won, but the lottery commission is not open till Tuesday (it is the Forth of July Weekend) so he must last four days before he comes into his wealth.This movie was really painful to watch. Not only was there a lot of cultural slang (which made the movie hard to follow at places) it is just painful watching all of the trouble that the hero must avoid to get his wealth, and the fact that not only people change around him, but he ends up changing as well. Before he has come into his wealth everybody considers him a snitch because the local bully attempted to extort some shoes out of him, and when he didn't stick up for him the bully is arrested.I did empathise with the hero though because it seems as if he is a nobody in the hood, and nobody wants him until he gets the ticket, and then he is Mr Popularity. Everybody is bending over backwards to befriend him and to try and get their cut of the pie. However I found the scene where the girl he likes is trying to bed him and then the huge carry on about her becoming pregnant was simply plain annoying. Okay, they are in the projects, but that does not mean condoms are not available. Then there is the church, that was just plain wrong. In fact the pastor in the church was simply a crook. It is probably that this was supposed to be a mockup, but it is scary that all to many churches use guilt and emotion to line their own pockets, and this particular scene where he shows the congregation the home he desires as being pure adulterated greed.This film is about greed and fear, how greed changes people and how fear infects even the closest friendships. The closest to the Lord of the Rings was the scene on the roof where the best friend offers to hold the ticket and the hero freaks out and drives him away. However, even though he is got the money, there is still the chance that he might lose it. As the boxer said, the only money he had come into had been stolen off of him as he left the house.For fear of reading too much into a pretty ordinary film, there is also some Christological ideas coming from it. That is in the sense of the now and not yet. It is said that we have inherited everything along with Christ, but the inheritance does not come until the consummation of everything (that is when we die). It is sort of like this film in that he had come into the money, but it will not be consummated until he hands the ticket in on Tuesday to collect his winnings. He may not have the cash now but it is coming.It is a bit concerning wondering how such huge amounts of money would last in the Hood. Everybody here is poor and everybody here fights to keep one step ahead, but when one of their own comes in on his own everything changes. In the end you know who your friends are when everybody else has deserted you, but in this situation it is difficult to see when everybody wants a piece of the action. In the end our hero had a good heart, and decided to use his new found wealth to help change the Hood.
Steve Pulaski
Lottery Ticket is much a film with two likable lead characters, but it has such a weak and predictable plot you wonder why you even care about the events in it. I admit that when I saw the trailer I was very interested in seeing it because it looked like F Gary Gray's fantastic urban Comedy called Friday and it's sequels. Hell, it even has Ice Cube that was in everyone of those film. It's a buddy film, an urban film, and a plot that's not the worst. I dig all three of those things.Bow Wow is a decent actor, but his music is less than impressive. After being less than impressed with his album New Jack City Part 2, I wasn't racing to see/hear anything Bow Wow for quite a while. Then this film comes along to grab me, shake me, and say "Hey! This is a film that is in the spirit of Friday! See it, Steve!" And I obeyed. Bow Wow does a fair job at acting, but I'd rather watch him than have him rap with music in the background. Lets just say, he's a tame Chris Tucker.The plot surfaces around High School graduate Kevin (Bow Wow) who works at a Foot Locker and desperately wants to own his own shoe design business. Living in an urban neighborhood, he doesn't have the cash to send himself to Design School and his Jesus freak of a grandmother wants him to grow up and "live in the real world".After a run in with the town bully and after disastrous results as, Kevin is sent to buy a lottery ticket for his grandmother where we get the best part of the movie - T-Pain. T-Pain's music is better than Bow Wow's, but not perfect. Only this time it was the opposite. I didn't like Bow Wow's music, but I still watched the film. I didn't like T-Pain's music in Freaknik: The Musical, but still saw his film. Where's the sign that "Entering Paradox"?You can guess the rest; he plays the numbers his grandma wants, then takes a fortune cookie message's lucky numbers and plays them. He winds up winning the jackpot of $370,000,000, and the only trouble he faces now is keeping possession of the ticket over the Fourth of July weekend without it slipping into the wrong hands. Kevin then gets a look at what money does to people, and talks to people that he may have never walked past if he didn't have a $370 million ticket to his name.Lottery Ticket has it's heart in the right place, but it lacks greatly in trying to unique. The plot is surely decent, but isn't utilized in a fresh, new way. Then again what movie is? It reminds me much of a film I reviewed earlier this year called The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. You know the company isn't going to lose out on everything. Even if the chips are down, so how, some unrealistic miracle comes around to save everyone. Lottery Ticket doesn't hit the jackpot, but it deserves a "free ticket".Starring: Bow Wow, Brandon T. Jackson, Naturi Naughton, Loretta Devine, Terry Crews, Ice Cube, and Gbenga Akinnagbe. Directed by: Erik White.
mozli
This poverty sit-com tries to fit everything in for an entertainment starved audience. These are some of the dumbest people ever depicted on film. Ice Cube needs to think about real motivations and limitations before he commits it to celluloid. Watching Terry Crews and Keith David in this I was hopeful but those hopes were dashed quickly. To think those two guys have worked with truly top shelf writers and directors and now its numb-skull time. Gotta pay that mortgage. Its funny. Ice Cube is this short, chunky guy who has to be the toughest guy in the movie. Not always plausible, dude. Just putting a scowl on your face doesn't make one a bad ass. Watch some Burt Lancaster films and you'll understand what I'm talking about.Spoiler:The helicopter at the end was cool. Never seen a heli in the 'hood before. Loretta Devine and Charlie Murphy could've have stolen the movie but are pros and kept their characters reined in.Would Ice Cube please do one movie without facial hair or is it some religious thing?
leighabc123
Bow Wow and Ice Cube need to go back to rapping, because their acting is very dry. Loretta Devine plays the grandma. She plays the same types of roles in every movie that she is in. There was an important message in this movie. Don't have sex without a condom because you may get a woman pregnant and have to pay child support. Bow Wow should have dated Naturi's character from the beginning of the movie. They had to add a bully just like the bully in Friday. No one can believe that Ice Cube's character haven't been outside in 30 years until he goes outside to beat up the bully after Bow Wow's "bodyguard" gets injured by the bully. Bow Wow gets to cash in the lottery ticket, buys a helicopter, and gives some of the money to charity. There should have been twists in the plot so this movie wouldn't be so predictable.