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On August 20, 2010 a comedy film, Lottery Ticket, starring Bow Wow, Brandon T. Jackson, Naturi Naughton, Teairra Mari, Keith David, Charlie Murphy, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Terry Crews, Bill Bellamy, Mike Epps, T-Pain, Loretta Devine, and Ice Cube, is released in USA.

Ice Cube has gone and done it again. He chose a winning script that adds to the success he has already realized as a producer. The Lottery Ticket is fast paced, funny and for the most part, family friendly. There are some references to drugs, sexual content and bad language, but overall this is the kind of stuff the kids hear at school, so it won’t be anything new to them.

This movie was created purely for comedy, though there are a couple of moral lessons that can be picked up on, like what real friends are about and helping others when good fortune falls in your lap.

This movie has one foot standing firmly in the fantasy of winning the lottery and the other foot in the real world that screams this is just for fun because very few ever win the lottery…though it is still nice to play the “what if” game.

The Atlanta locale could have been Any Where, USA, though Erik White, the film’s director has been able to convey the ins and outs of the hood and the variety of individuals that are found in the inner city.

The dream of winning the lottery has hit the entire neighborhood that BowWow, playing Kevin, lives in with his grandmother, played by Loretta Devine. Kevin actually gets a winning ticket and the fun begins as the hood hears about his great fortune. Kevin’s best friend Benny, played by Brandon Jackson, does not understand why Kevin would help a recluse, played by Ice Cube, who lives in the basement.

As lottery fever sweeps the hood, Kevin disdains the lottery, stating that it is specifically designed to keep people who are poor from realizing their dreams. Once he wins the lottery, he realized that it is the poor people that keep poor people down as the local thugs try to take his winning ticket, and then his winnings.

I found that some of the violence in the movie was a little hard to take, even though it is a fair representation of what the rest of the country imagines what the hood is like and the characters that one would find in the inner city hood.

Overall, this new comedy from Ice Cube’s production company is leisurely paced and colorful, to say the least. We get a look at the “what if” side of lottery tickets when a young man wins with a ticket that was worth $370,000,000.00. Real life is sometimes as strange as fiction. Ask any lottery winner how things changed for them when they won. In the movie the lead character is just a young man with the dream of making it out of the hood with a shoe company of his own. Of course the criminal element in the hood is attracted when he wins the lottery and it is portrayed in a rather stereo-typed manner by the movie, but none the less, the “neighborhood thug” and of course the movie would not be complete if the vixen of the hood weren’t his next problem after winning the lottery. She wants in on the spoils too.

Much like Barbershop, this movie tells the tale of a community as well as the one lucky winner of the lottery who is plunged into the deep sea of crime and is put at the peril of losing his life over the money. The community is portrayed by characters that represent most neighborhoods across America in the inner city. The recurring theme here is that a lot of money brings you a lot of trouble. But the lots of money does make life a whole lot easier on the financial front and this is the whole point to the lead character, Kevin. If we were all honest with ourselves, it would be the money that matters as well, no matter how many problems come along with the $370 million.

Honesty and integrity are not the main focus of this movie, nor is realism, but it does give a lukewarm version of the hood, and though there is some gritty violence it is good to remember there are families that live in that inner city environment and wish upon the lottery everyday they can spare the money to buy a ticket.

It is often strange how life mirrors fiction or the other way around. There is a gritty undertow of violence in our cities, just as in the movie, yet there are also people in the hood that daily work towards being able to be financially stable enough to get out of that neighborhood and establish a life in a calmer, much safer area.

This movie may not be eligible for the NAACP Image Awards, simply because this is not the fairest illustration of Black America. The good point to the movie is that this community united, and in that found hope. The young people had plans and were working towards a better future. It was also very nice to see the respect that Kevin gave to his grandmother and his moral stance against the silence of the streets code that many in the hood culture have about the illegal activities carried out. Kevin returning to his community with financial support for scholarships, business and parks showed that he never forgot his roots and cared about the community on a level that made a difference.

People are watching this movie and finding points of common interest, even applauding once the movie has ended. The comedic factor of the movie does not rate it as the funniest movie ever made, but then, it has never been marketed as the funniest either.

It is apparent by the treatment that Ice Cube gave to this movie that he gave a gut level depiction of the good people in the hood that are honest and will work hard for a better life. This is the example he grew up with. Both sides of hood society are shown in their raw state, take it or leave it. The movie depiction really is not that far from the truth of the neighborhoods that are found in the inner city.

Lottery Ticket is directed by Erik White, written by Abdul Williams, Abdul Williams, Erik White, and produced Mark Burg, Oren Koules, Andrew Kosove, Broderick Johnson, Matt Alverez. The movie is distributed by Warner Bros.

You can watch the official trailer below.

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