Lottery Ticket (2010) directed by Erik White
So I was just chilling at home and had HBO on and this movie was just starting. For some reason I sat through the whole thing and before I knew it I just watched my movie for the day, LOL. Obviously any movie with Bow Wow as the lead star is going to be awful even though I think I liked him in Like Mike. Lottery Ticket is a sloppily made formulaic comedy that I guess you could say is mildly entertaining. Honestly I can't even be mad at it because, you know, what was I really expecting? It does feature Ice Cube and the always funny Terry Crews, so at least it has that going for it.
So I actually thought up of this story way before this movie even came out. What if someone from a really bad area wins the lottery? What kind of adventures would he find himself in before he could cash it in and how would the people around him change? And that is basically the gist of Lottery Ticket, but what I found fascinating is that this movie is actually a perfect allegory for athletes coming out of the ghettos. You always hear these stories of ex-athletes who've made millions of dollars who are dead broke and you always wonder how could that possibly happen? As Patrick Ewing once said, "We might make a lof of money but we spend a lot of money." Antoine Walker made over $100 million during his playing career and is now playing in the NBA developmental league making chump change just to get by. A while ago I saw a fascinating piece about athletes from the ghettos. There is a certain unwritten pact among a lot of the people from the neighborhood that if one of them makes it big and gets out that they take the rest of them with them, a sort of pipe dream support system. That's why all these athletes have like 30 people entourages who basically just live off of their star friend.
A lot of this mentality is reflected in Lottery Ticket where people who didn't even know the kid's name are now suddenly his best friend. There is even a female character in the movie who wants to have sex with Bow Wow's character without a condom in order to get impregnated by him. It may seem like some kind of extreme cliche gold digger character, but this actually does happen in real life ALL THE TIME. There is a whole subculture of women who are professional groupies to ball players whose golden ticket is to become a baby's mama. As this character says, "That is my lotto ticket."
So yeah the film is kind of dumb, but I did find it fascinating just for this allegorical aspect. And yeah, I'll admit it was kind of funny.
Grade: C-
So I was just chilling at home and had HBO on and this movie was just starting. For some reason I sat through the whole thing and before I knew it I just watched my movie for the day, LOL. Obviously any movie with Bow Wow as the lead star is going to be awful even though I think I liked him in Like Mike. Lottery Ticket is a sloppily made formulaic comedy that I guess you could say is mildly entertaining. Honestly I can't even be mad at it because, you know, what was I really expecting? It does feature Ice Cube and the always funny Terry Crews, so at least it has that going for it.
So I actually thought up of this story way before this movie even came out. What if someone from a really bad area wins the lottery? What kind of adventures would he find himself in before he could cash it in and how would the people around him change? And that is basically the gist of Lottery Ticket, but what I found fascinating is that this movie is actually a perfect allegory for athletes coming out of the ghettos. You always hear these stories of ex-athletes who've made millions of dollars who are dead broke and you always wonder how could that possibly happen? As Patrick Ewing once said, "We might make a lof of money but we spend a lot of money." Antoine Walker made over $100 million during his playing career and is now playing in the NBA developmental league making chump change just to get by. A while ago I saw a fascinating piece about athletes from the ghettos. There is a certain unwritten pact among a lot of the people from the neighborhood that if one of them makes it big and gets out that they take the rest of them with them, a sort of pipe dream support system. That's why all these athletes have like 30 people entourages who basically just live off of their star friend.
A lot of this mentality is reflected in Lottery Ticket where people who didn't even know the kid's name are now suddenly his best friend. There is even a female character in the movie who wants to have sex with Bow Wow's character without a condom in order to get impregnated by him. It may seem like some kind of extreme cliche gold digger character, but this actually does happen in real life ALL THE TIME. There is a whole subculture of women who are professional groupies to ball players whose golden ticket is to become a baby's mama. As this character says, "That is my lotto ticket."
So yeah the film is kind of dumb, but I did find it fascinating just for this allegorical aspect. And yeah, I'll admit it was kind of funny.
Grade: C-
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