Despite Kristen Bell’s likeable performance and a really intriguing premise based on a true story, the movie is a total bust.
There is something so brazen about perpetrating a $40 million scheme with pieces of paper that many people overlook, and even fewer see as valuable.
But not the women who scammed their way onto a most wanted list with a sophisticated plot selling coupons to American families while defrauding massive holding companies like Goodman Fielder and Proctor & Gamble.
It’s like the $24 million McDonalds Monopoly heist, exploiting something frequently written off as valueless, but the ingenuity of these scams is what makes them way more interesting than a casino caper.
That’s the idea behind Queenpins, a chaotic comedy movie starring Kristen Bell, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Vince Vaughn and Paul Walter Hauser, based on a real-life 2012 incident in which three suburban women were busted running a multimillion-dollar counterfeit coupons ring.
Australians love a sale or a discount, but we don’t have a coupon culture like the Americans – and definitely not since the supermarkets were forced to stop using fuel vouchers as incentives to shop.
But in the US, swipe once for 50c off that box of cereal, and again for two-for-one shampoo. It’s a game in which every barcode is a tiny hit of victory.
Connie (Bell) is better at this game than most. She can get a $138 supermarket bill down to $16.45 or score $400 worth of laundry detergent for $57. Will she ever eat 18 boxes of taco shells? Probably not, but they sure look impressive lined up in her pantry.
Trying to fill an emotional hole because of three failed rounds of IVF and needing a distraction from her joyless husband (Joel McHale), Connie has made the coupon game a competitive sport.
After she receives a coupon for a completely free product, she and friend Jojo (Howell-Baptiste) cooks up a Robin Hood-esque scheme in which they can make a little – or a lot of – cash while helping out other families with their cost-of-living challenges.
Meanwhile, Ken (Hauser), an inflexible and determined loss prevention officer, teams up Simon (Vaughn), a postal inspector, to investigate the source of all the coupons.
Queenpins’ foundation is strong, including Bell’s performance as the likeable Connie. But directors and screenwriters Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly didn’t know what to do with the premise and the cast they had.
Was this a Steven Soderbergh-type heist movie, like Ocean’s 11 or Logan Lucky? In parts. Or was it more of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein-esque goofball romp, like Game Night or Horrible Bosses? Sometimes.
Queenpins feels like three different movies and none of them are good, and none of them are funny.
It betrays its own ambitions in trying to say something about average Americans and giant corporations or maybe marriages and independence, but also wish fulfilment and greed?
Throw in some gun-toting militias and the most cringe pants-sh*tting joke, and that’s Queenpins, a tangled mess of a nonsensical movie where none of the threads come together with any satisfaction.
It’s a waste of a really intriguing story.
Rating: 1.5/5
Queenpins is streaming now on Paramount+
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2021-10-06 04:56:13Z
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