Scott is having a rough day. He’s been fired from his long held but never really explained job and he painfully collects his last check while his boss adds insult to injury, hurling platitudes like ‘it’s nothing personal’. No one shows up at his going away party and it’s clear that it is personal. Scotts great hope in life — post employment, is to win the lottery. Something his sister Cynthia finds laughable, she gets him work doing odd jobs around the house of the family whose kids she takes care of. The film proceeds to follow the people in Scotts life, all of them struggling with personal problems of one degree or another, many centered around money. What is difficult to convey is the tone of the film, slow and quiet, often scenes consist of a single static camera of two people conversing. Ever positive, Scott tries to reunite his bitter sister with their sorrowful absentee father, he makes friends with the disabled child his sister takes care of, and he plays the lotto.
The non existent production values sometimes add the melancholy tone of the film, but the sound is terrible and often entire scenes are inaudible. The acting is all over the map, often Matthew Pizana playing Scott looks like he is reading his lines off of notes taped to the floor, other times he is very natural and believable if a little bland. The narrative of the movie jumps around and is frustrating in that it offers very little conflict and is truly a slice of Scott’s life up to the time that, he, wait for it, wins the Lotto.
It’s many problems aside, I got the feeling that Jacobs was trying to make a film that intentionally bucks the fundamental conventions of Hollywood movies. By dropping the three act structure using very few shots he seems to be an alchemist trying to make gold out of nothing. This time all he got was lead, but with some better technical effort, better actors and more attention to whatever it is he is trying to say, next time he might get … better lead, but it will have a distinct voice buried in there somewhere.
