There was a quote from Double Indemnity that kept going through my mind as I was watching Paul Feig's Jackpot!, when Edward G. Robinson asked Fred MacMurray if he wanted a cut in salary, the latter asked, "Should I laugh now, or wait until it gets funny?" That's the approach I took to the newest Amazon Prime movie, waiting to laugh until it got funny. The problem is that it never did.

I don't know if I've expressed this in the past, but I tend to have difficulty in finding humor in a plot that involves murder in any form, even if that act is supposed to be legalized. Say what you will, but the topic tends to me part of my "no zone" of comedy. It becomes even more baffling in the case of this movie, whose whole thing revolves around a lottery in which anyone who kills the holder of a winning ticket is entitled to the prize. In this movie, it's never even explained why this lottery would work better than, say, Powerball or something, so what are we even doing here?

Nonetheless, that's the lottery system of the state of California in a version of 2030 that looks suspiciously the same as 2024. I'm not even talking about the homelessness as seen in that society; I'm also talking about what passes for pop culture these days. If one were to go by this future, the Kardashians would somehow be worthy of being memorialized in wax and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be the focal point of many an action movie quip.

This capitalistic version of The Purge is where Katie Kim (Awkwafina) makes her entry. Hers is just another Tragic Background: a former child actress whose father stole her money, leaving her and her sick (now dead) mother to fend for themselves. Off to a running start already with the lazy tropes. She checks into her Airbnb, which leads to a series of events set off by a sewage leak that leads her to being in the possession of a winning ticket.

Yes, the humor of this goes that low, low enough to make constant use of bodily functions. On top of the sewage leak, there are at least two fart jokes and what I believe is supposed to be a gay sex joke courtesy of a Machine Gun Kelly cameo, proving once again that he has no business going anywhere near a camera.

Well, with the rules of the lotto being what they are, people start coming after her almost immediately. Those rules include her staying alive until sundown within the confines of Los Angeles with practically anyone with a losing ticket coming for you. Oh, but guns aren't allowed for some reason, in what I can only assume is a dig at the current government in Sacramento.

However, there exists a racket dedicated to keeping her alive until sundown. This is where Noel (John Cena) comes in. He's a former mercenary who now makes a living out of protecting these winners. Now that Katie is on the verge of coming into billions of dollars, despite her desire to get out of the city, which would get her out of the lottery, he has a lot of incentive to keep her alive, including getting in touch with a former squad mate (Simu Liu, who between this and Atlas, looks like he desperately wants Marvel to call him back) who practically screams "Duplicitous" at first sight.

So, predictable trajectory and terrible humor are afoot. Unfortunately, the fight scenes are nothing to brag about. All of this screams for a bloodier affair than we get, despite this movie being rated R, something that I can only guess happened through its toilet humor. Not only is the bulk of the action bloodless, but despite there being an entire city gunning (or knifing, or whatever) for them, they mostly don't react in kind to their pursuers. What are the rules on self-defense here? If it's that no one can be killed back, the movie doesn't convey this. I'm just going to invoke Occam's Razor here and say that Feig and writer Rob Yescombe lack the backbone to explore the grey zones of morality. Even Double Indemnity had more balls than that.