Movie Review: ‘Lottery Ticket’

It’s hard out there for a kid from the projects who scores a $370-million lottery payoff but who must wait for the claim office to reopen (infernal federal holiday!). Suddenly he has “a premature crack-baby felon” straight out of prison willing — eager, in fact — to kill for it. Not to mention the notorious local Jezebel interested in the young man’s company.

This is the premise of “Lottery Ticket,” an ensemble comedy from a pair of first-time feature filmmaking collaborators, screenwriter Abdul Williams and director Erik White. You know what? This movie’s good. It’s fast, deftly paced and funny, and only some misjudged violence in the last lap keeps it from being better than good.

One foot in fantasyland, the other in the real world, the picture isn’t out for anything except laughs, plus a little astute sociology. Virtually everyone on screen knows where to find those laughs, how to deliver them and how hard to push them — i.e., not so hard as to tire us out before the leading character learns of his scary stroke of luck.

The film was shot in Atlanta, but the locale is Anyproject, U.S.A. Director White (who has done scads of videos) navigates, fluidly, the denizens and the ins and outs of this sprawling development.

Protagonist Kevin, played by Bow Wow, lives with his grandmother (Loretta Devine). His best friend, Benny (Brandon T. Jackson), doesn’t understand why Kevin takes the time to help out the mysterious recluse (Ice Cube, who also executive produced) who lives in the basement. “Dude has slave dust on him,” he mutters.

In the opening scenes, lottery fever has hit the entire neighborhood, and Kevin, a Foot Locker employee who dreams of attending design school, expresses disdain for any racket “designed to keep poor people poor.”

Upon learning he has won the millions, he becomes a conflicted soul up for grabs. He must survive the next three days to cash in; as a bridge “loan” he takes a satchel of bills from the local mobster (Keith David) and goes on a tear with his cronies.

On the fly we hear throwaway lines such as Benny’s pickup attempt: “I need a girl I can take to church and the strip clubs.” It’s not polite, it’s not high-minded and it sticks to various formulas, but “Lottery Ticket” plays into the strengths of its prodigiously talented cast.

And then it sort of dies near the end. The increasing focus on sociopathic bad guy Lorenzo (Genga Akinnagbe) is sour and frightening in a non-comic way, and I really do wish the filmmakers could go back and rethink the grimly prolonged shot of Akinnagbe squeezing David’s nethers.

I was perfectly happy keeping time with everybody else in “Lottery Ticket,” notably the two leads (whose friendship is tested by the sudden arrival of millions). Kevin’s childhood pal, played by Naturi Naughton, is as sincere and easygoing as Mike Epps is hilarious in his cameo as a self-interested Baptist minister.

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