The Details

Lottery Ticket

Bow Wow, Brandon T. Jackson, Naturi Naughton

Directed by Erik White

Rated PG-13

Beyond the Weekly

Lottery Ticket

IMDb: Lottery Ticket

Rotten Tomatoes: Lottery Ticket

Early in the lame urban comedy Lottery Ticket, main character Kevin (Bow Wow) points out that lotteries are just designed to keep poor people poor by selling them false hope. That’s pretty much the only moment of insight or self-awareness in a movie that’s otherwise a parade of painful ghetto stereotypes, missing every opportunity for satire or meaningful social commentary. Instead, Kevin merely dodges a bunch of one-dimensional caricatures as he must wait three days to cash in his winning ticket for $370 million. In the process, he learns not to value money over friendship, and that the girl of his dreams was standing right in front of him all along. He also faces down apparently the only thug in the local projects, but there’s never any real sense of danger or consequences. In this candy-coated version of the inner city, money really does solve everything.