Coupon collecting isn’t exactly the thing that most people think of landing you in prison. For Arizonans Connie (Kristen Bell) and JoJo (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), they save thousands of dollars a year collecting coupons and matching them with store specials that in many ways is their job.
Sure, JoJo has dreams of being a “Super Saver” YouTube star, but Connie is stuck in a dead-end marriage to an IRS auditor, Rick (Joel McHale), and the three-time gold medalist (in speed walking) is convinced that this is not all there is to life.
Queenpins is based on a true story out of the Southwestern state where a trio of women was arrested on a $40 million coupon scheme that netted them incredible profits that they thought were no big deal. I mean, it’s coupons, right?
In writer-directors Aron Gaudet Gita Pullapilly’s crime comedy these women are embodied by Kristen Bell’s Connie and Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s JJ. They are the best of friends, neighbors, and partners in coupon crime. They discover a way to go to nearby Mexico and the printing factory that makes the “free” coupons and have a couple on the inside give them boxes upon boxes of unused coupons they Carol and JJ would, in turn, sell via a website at 50-percent the product’s worth and it was all profit for our protagonists.
On the other side of the coin investigating the goings-on of these suburban coupon-crime lords is loss prevention officer Ken (Paul Walker Hauser, Richard Jewell), who calls the FBI repeatedly to no avail. He is amazed at the perfection of these coupons and his office is flooded with reports of duplicate coupons being used across the nation.
He finally hears from law enforcement, but it’s not G-Men, it’s the Postal Service in the form of a postal investigator Simon Kilmurry (Vince Vaughn.) See, by using the mail to send coupons and collect money from their customers giving them 50-percent of the value of the product’s worth for a free coupon, numerous mail laws are broken. Ken is not thrilled, this is a scandal of the highest order, but he and Simon form an unlikely bond that has many calling for a spin-off.
Seriously, these two are incredible together. There’s a comic timing meets general human caring between these two when the federal agent realizes that Hauser’s loss prevention man wants to do something more meaningful with his life and thus, why this case is so important. Although not the crux of the narrative of Queenpins, it is certainly one of its endearingly beating hearts. Kilmurry takes him under his wing, and we have two distinct pairs of characters whose connection with the other is cinematically priceless. We’ve even heard rumbles of a spin-off with Vaughn and Hauser. Count me the first in line.
Bell is her usual talented self, but there’s a layer of uniqueness to her portrayal of Connie that is that suburban, unsatisfied, childless (despite repeated expensive IVF treatments) and she’s married to a man in Joel McHale’s IRS auditor that is a loveless marriage and supportless to put it mildly. Hauser speaks of the coupon high that a shopper gets when they save all sorts of money. If there is a woman who needs that uplift and embodies that sentiment, it is Bell’s Connie. She just takes it up a few levels. In the hands of the Frozen II and The Good Place star fits into the entrepreneur in search of meaning like a glove. After all, these are coupons that for the most part, were destined for destruction.
But the moment they used the United States Postal Service, laws were broken, and she and her BFF were going to have to answer for their crimes.
Howell-Baptiste is terrific. The fellow The Good Place veteran rocked out the world in HBO’s Barry and continues to impress. She effortlessly connects with Bell and it is utterly believable that these two would be BFFs, neighbors, coupon junkies, and two souls who would concoct such a scheme that would net them millions of dollars and for many define the American dream of success at all costs.
Although a smaller role, Bebe Rexha scene steals as a hacker, Temple Tina.
Tina stole JoJo’s identity and ruined her life. But when you’re a crime novice and need help with taking care of millions of dollars without any one of importance noticing… you call Temple Tina. The way she commands those scenes she puts Howell-Batiste and Bell in their place. It is Rexha who is the alpha dog in this operation, even if she’s just the one executing the IT angles to cover anything that would raise flags.
Gaudet and Pullapilly have a firm command of the material and never take the film to places that it’s not. It is a crime comedy in the vein of Midnight Run and Ocean’s 8 where it is just good old-fashioned Hollywood entertainment that one probably won’t remember a year from now, but for right now, it is exactly the type of two hours of escapism we need.
Grade: B