DVD Reviews

Lottery Ticket - Blu-ray Review

By June L. Nov 22, 2010, 15:32 GMT

Kevin Carson (Bow Wow) has just won $370 million in the Mondo Millions Lottery. But the Lottery Claim Office is closed for a long holiday weekend, so before he can collect, Kevin must figure out how to keep a lid on his good fortune and survive the next three days. As his prize news spreads, Kevin quickly discovers the good, the bad and the ugly in his friends and neighbors. ...more

What would you do if you won the lottery? There are not many of us who haven’t thought about it whether we buy tickets or not. It seems like it would be an answer to many problems, but as we see in this movie, it can lead to a whole lot of new problems.

In an urban story with a hero who has a dream of entrepreneurship rather than being a sports star or a famous singer, Bow Wow gives an excellent performance as Kevin Carson. Kevin just graduated from high school lives with his grandmother played by Loretta Devine. Kevin has a job at Foot Locker, loves sneakers and has aspirations of designing them one day for his own company.

Kevin is a realist, and knows that he and his grandmother don’t have the kind of money it takes for him to make the first step in his dream by going to design school. In his neighborhood there are good friends Benny (Brandon T. Jackson) and Stacie (Naturi Naughton) who understand his work ethic and try to help. There are also troublesome elements like Lorenzo (Gbenga Akennagbe) who has just been released from one prison term, and thinks that Kevin’s job means a score of free sneaker for him and his thugs.

His attempt to collect his “gift” shoes gets Kevin fired, even though he has done the right thing by trying to get the thugs to pay. Depressed and disillusioned, Kevin stops by the corner store to pick up his grandma’s lottery ticket and some things for a mysterious reclusive neighbor Mr. Washington. He is talked into getting a ticket for himself, and you can guess the result.

The scene in which Kevin and his grandmother realize that he has the winning ticket is wonderful! It is so truthfully portrayed, so much fun to watch, and you have the feeling that things are really going to turn around for these good people.

Kevin tries to get his grandma to keep it a secret, but you know she won’t, and soon he is besieged by everyone from Lorenzo to the pastor of his grandmother’s church all wanting the ticket.

Kevin and Benny and Stacie try to figure out a way to keep the ticket safe, and have to deal with all kinds of “outside” pressures until Kevin can go downtown and claim the money. Of course there are temptations, greedy moments, loss of trust and what seems to be more disillusionment for Kevin before the story can be resolved in a satisfying manner.

The young leads, surrounded by a well-known cast including the above mentioned Loretta Devine, Ice Cube (who also is an executive producer), Keith David, Terry Crews, Charlie Murphy and Mike Epps, just to name a few, provide and entertaining as well as cautionary tale for these times.
Lottery Ticket Blu Ray is presented on single disc with a running time of 99 minutes.

The extras that accompany this film will be of interest. I learned more than I ever knew about the sneaker craze from the first featurette “Lottery Ticket: Custom Kicks” in which Bow Wow, a “sneaker-head” himself, takes viewers into his collection and then explains how the craze began.

It makes sense how collectors might be tempted to spend $5,000 on a pair of tennis shoes, and why shoes are an important part of the look in big cities where everyone doesn’t own a car, but travel on buses or subways where you don’t make eye contact but stare at each other’s shoes.
“Clean shoes, and the girls think you are clean, dirty shoes, they think you must be dirty.”

There is a featurette “Junior’s Guide to the Corner Store, with co-star T-Pain, and one about the casting of the ensemble in “Everybody’s In.” The Du-Rag Model features co-star Bill Bellamy and finally there are deleted scenes.