You're saying you don't want to know more about 'Queenpins'?
Paramount
At last, we have “Coupon: The Movie.”
Actually, remembering the above “Mr. Show” sketch is one of the few ways I made it through the true story-inspired “Queenpins,” an impressively average movie that takes a somewhat intriguing premise—two despairing women make millions by selling illegally acquired coupons—and doing almost nothing with it. It’s a movie that needs to run and shimmy and think but chooses to nap.
Kristen Bell stars as Connie, who doesn’t especially like her husband (Joel McHale, in his comfort zone as a jackass) and is very much still mourning a miscarriage. She thrills in the massive savings that coupons can provide and in the bond it generates with her new bestie JoJo (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), who is desperate to create a brand for herself via YouTube videos. When they discover a massive quantity of coupons for free items that are usually discarded but can be stolen and sold with help on the inside, the titular entrepreneurs show that a website doesn’t have to look professional to drive so many sales that bank accounts get shut down due to too much activity.
Maybe someone like Steven Soderbergh (“Ocean’s Eleven,” “Logan Lucky”) could have found the right way into this story of financial crime and corporate thievery and societal desperation, questioning the balance sheets of the companies that sound the alarm and the people who flock to Connie and JoJo’s company, where they sell the coupons for half the cost of the item that the customer will then obtain for free. Or, considering the unfortunate title, maybe the movie could have had something to say about sexism in the workplace in America and the decision by some women to take extreme measures because of a system that still isn’t equal, no matter how many strides have been taken.
That is not “Queenpins,” though, a movie that dead-ends as writers/directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly present Connie and JoJo as mostly foolish (their efforts to launder their money are random and reckless and shown to be unnecessary anyway) and little interest in the technicalities of what’s happening as we instead spend time with a sad-sack loss prevention officer (Paul Walter Hauser of “Richard Jewell”) and post office inspector (Vince Vaughn) as they try to track down the people behind the scam. But we already know what’s happening and how and why, and listening to Vaughn’s character explain to Hauser’s why it’s not appropriate to go to the bathroom in his pants is perhaps not the best way to show that this story means anything. As a comedy, “Queenpins” is feeble and distracted; as a drama it’s passive and simplistic, redeemed only by Bell’s natural charm and an engaging friendship between Connie and JoJo.
The goal is a hilarious, blue-collar caper; the result is something that seems like it should come free with purchase of detergent.
C
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