Relevant Reviews Ice Cube's 'Lottery Ticket'

If you have seen Boyz N The Hood, Juice or the seemingly dozens of other 'hood movies made in the '90s, you might assume that everyone living in urban projects is depressed, gloomy and either prone to violence or living in fear of it. But as a Caucasian big-city reporter who's been thrust into covering everything from Jesse Jackson's Chicago crusades to life on Skid Row to the lives of former gangbangers striving to make amends by leading after-school programs for at-risk youth, I've been blessed with the eye-opening opportunity to see that there's plenty of good and happiness thriving in our inner cities as well.

That's why seeing a movie like Lottery Ticket released on a major scale is refreshing. As a comedy centered around the misadventures of a teenager in the Atlanta projects who wins a $370 million lottery and then has to survive the three-day Fourth of July weekend in order to claim his prize, Lottery Ticket offers a fun and vibrant look at inner-city life that people of any race or background can enjoy.

Kevin (Bow Wow) is an 18-year-old, fresh out of high school with big dreams of opening up his own design firm to make flashy new tennis shoes for companies like Nike. But his reality ensures that he can't afford design school and instead has to keep a roof over his and his grandma's head by working at a Foot Locker. He's a straight-shooting, hard-working kid who believes that the lottery is a scam that places false hope in the poor people around him, but when his grandma asks him to buy a ticket for her, he caves in to temptation and soon finds that he's the winner.

Living in close quarters amid the projects, it doesn't take long for word to get out, and soon Kevin finds that he's being pursued by everyone from con artists to hot girls, and from the neighborhood criminal mastermind (a wickedly funny Keith David) to a thug with a grudge who wants to take Kevin's ticket away from him by as painful a means as possible. Meanwhile, Kevin is learning who's really got his back among the hundreds of people who suddenly claim to be his friends.

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