Awkwafina & John Cena Comedy Is A Prime Video Hit Despite Being A Rotten Tomatoes Flop

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you know how this works by now. A movie debuts in theaters and either nobody goes to see it and/or the critics tear it to pieces, only for the film to see a resurgence in interest when it becomes available for streaming. It happened just recently with the Mike Myers flop “The Cat in the Hat,” and would you believe even “Madame Web” saw success when it finally hit Netflix? You probably would, because as Michael Fassbender flop “The Snowman” proved in 2023, Netflix subscribers will pretty much watch anything.

Netflix is the kingmaker among streamers with 277 million subscribers, but Amazon Prime Video’s 230 million subs isn’t too shabby. As it happens, we have a good example of how a brand new critical flop can become a hit on Prime Video with “Jackpot!,” the 2024 action comedy from “Bridesmaids” and “Spy” director by Paul Feig. This Awkwafina and John Cena-starring effort never had a chance to test its mettle at the box office as it went straight to Prime Video on August 15, 2024. Unfortunately, the film had every opportunity to upset critics, which is exactly what it did, managing just a 30% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. But that doesn’t seem to have deterred Prime Video subscribers, who are enthusiastically streaming “Jackpot!” as I type.

In “Jackpot!” Awkwafina plays budding actor Katie Kim, who moves to Hollywood in hopes of making it big only to find herself the unwitting winner of a $3.6 billion lottery. Unfortunately, in this near-future version of California, anyone in the state is allowed to legally kill the lottery winner before sundown and claim their substantial prize. So, with the help of John Cena’s amateur lottery protection agent Noel Cassidy, Katie finds herself dodging practically the entire state as she tries to stay alive and keep her jackpot.

That might sound like the kind of mad-cap action at which Paul Feig excels, but sadly, none of it amounted to much in the way of praise from reviewers. As the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes states, “Despite having a cast and crew of comedy all-stars on hand, ‘Jackpot!’ provides little payout thanks to a puerile script and erratic pacing.” But it seems in much the same way as Netflixers will stream anything as long as it’s in the “Recently Added” category, so too will Prime Video customers eagerly devour a new movie on their streaming service of choice.

According to streaming viewership tracker FlixPatrol, “Jackpot!” is seeing worldwide streaming success. As the site’s Top 10 tracker shows, “Jackpot!” is currently the number one film in the world on Prime Video. That’s impressive enough, but a look under the hood reveals an even more triumphant debut for Awkwafina’s critically-maligned action comedy. As of August 28, the film is number one in 66 countries around the world and is charting in 108. Not only that, “Jackpot!” has been the number one most-watched film on Prime Video for a full seven days in 46 of those countries, including the United States, where it still sits atop the charts.

That’s pretty impressive for a film that The Observer called “a tedious amalgam of things you’ve already seen” and that the Daily Telegraph described as something that “unfolds out like a cut PlayStation scene that never gets to the point.” Of course, Rotten Tomatoes’ percentage score can be misleading. In this case, the 30% is simply a rough estimate of how many of the 69 critics included in the score actually liked the movie. Consulting the average rating on RT, which attempts to actually represent how critics graded the movie, reveals “Jackpot!” managed 4.7 out of 10 — not much better than 30%, but still.

However you look at it, then, “Jackpot!” was never going to be a critical hit. But since Awkwafina and her “Kung Fu Panda 4” co-star Jack Black gave /Film one of the best (and weirdest) interviews in the site’s history, we can’t really fault her all that much. What’s more, there’s also no question “Jackpot!” has found an audience among streamers, which, depending on your view of the streaming age, may or may not be all that much of a triumph.