John Cena and Awkwafina in Paul Feig action comedy

There are plenty of video games that have been adapted into movies, but Paul Feig’s latest comedy feels like a movie that should be adapted into a video game. After a few minutes of slow accumulation, Big prize! A series of non-stop action scenes breaks out, with violence that is both hilarious and brutally realized masterfully. It’s all very silly, but somehow it works, thanks to fight choreography that would make Jackie Chan proud and the introduction of America’s premier new comedy team, Awkwafina and John Cena.

What is that, you ask? Awkwafina and John Cena? Well, yes, the petite, fast-talking actress is hilariously paired with the WWE star who has somehow transformed himself into America’s cutest hunk. (If you’ve seen his near-nude comedy sequence at the Academy Awards, you know what I’m talking about.) Like a modern-day Laurel and Hardy—if only that legendary screen team had exponentially improved their ’s violence quotient – ​​these two make this extremely silly action comedy funnier than it has any right to be.

Awkwafina stars as Katie, a former child star best known for starring in TV commercials for canned pasta, who comes to Los Angeles to care for her ailing mother after a long career hiatus. What she doesn’t know is that the city is now in the midst of a lottery craze – except this particular game involves one person winning a massive jackpot totaling billions of dollars, only to be chased for a day by others who can kill them by killing them Come and claim this money. There are no rules except one, no guns. Katie would know this if she’d only seen the film’s opening scene, in which the ill-fated Seann William Scott makes a hilarious appearance.

While auditioning for a show, Katie discovers a lottery card in her borrowed costume and discovers she’s the winner. With her picture instantly appearing on every cell phone in the city, she becomes a target for everyone who comes in contact with her, including other actresses vying for the role and, more dangerously, a room full of martial arts enthusiasts.

Just when things are looking particularly dire, she’s rescued by Noel (Senna), a freelancer in a dapper suit and white socks who offers to protect her in exchange for a percentage of the winnings. It was a pretty frantic negotiation as he proposed the terms while fending off hordes of attackers. Cena and Awkwafina’s ability to simultaneously deliver quips and quips amidst ultra-violent beats is one of the film’s chief pleasures. Even more interestingly, Cena’s Noel comes across as a nice guy, a sensitive guy who sincerely wants to help people but also happens to have the ability to bring them into submission without much effort.

The rest of this frantically paced film basically plays like a live-action Woody Woodpecker cartoon, with the pair being relentlessly pursued by a group of seemingly normal citizens who instantly transform into bloodthirsty would-be assassins. Katie and Noel end up in a panic room at Machine Gun Kelly’s house (don’t ask), but when this seemingly safe space is also in danger of being destroyed, Noel is forced to turn to his professional nemesis Louis Lewis (Simu Liu) ) for help. , looking fawning in an all-white suit and turtleneck), with whom he has a painful history. Not surprisingly, the Union soon moved south.

It’s not sophisticated entertainment, unless you count Cena stamping his big foot on a man’s crotch and apologizing, “It’s either a wounded dick or a burnt dick,” which is a witty Witty words. But Rob Yescombe’s script has a clever premise and enough genuinely funny lines to make the film more than just a guilty pleasure, like when Louis tells a filthy Noel, “You Looking like Wreck-It Ralph after a 14-hour cocaine binge or when a drugged Machine Gun Kelly wakes up and asks, “Did I fall asleep in the pool again? ” (Whoever suggested a rapper-actor make a self-deprecating cameo should get a raise.)

by the time Big prize! By the time you reach the conclusion, you’ll be as exhausted as the characters, as the manic process inevitably begins to repeat itself. But there’s a lot of fun to be had along the way, especially if you’re willing to put your brain on hold and embrace your inner child.