‘Queenpins,’ coupon scam is no bargain
Three Arizona women were arrested in 2012 for running a massive coupon scam – massive to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
That’s a heck of a story, and it should have made for a heck of a movie. “Queenpins” (in theaters Friday), with a great cast led by Kristen Bell, isn’t it. It’s an OK movie, or movies, more accurately. Writers and directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly can’t seem to have decided whether to make an offbeat comedy about two under-appreciated women turning to crime or a mismatched buddy cop comedy.
So they made both. It’s not a seamless fit.
The cast, with Kristen Bell and Paul Walter Hauser, is outstanding
The Arizona women, Robin Ramirez, Marilyn Johnson and Amiko Fountain, pleaded guilty, Ramirez to counterfeiting, fraud and illegal control of an enterprise;
Johnson and Fountain to counterfeiting. “Queenpins” is loosely based on the case. Really loosely. That’s fine. This isn’t a documentary and doesn’t need to be.
It should, however, have a solid narrative structure and it doesn’t. There’s a lot going on here.
Connie Kaminski (Bell) lives in Phoenix, married to Rick (Joel Mchale), an auditor for the IRS. After a miscarriage, their marriage has deteriorated. Rick is out of town a lot – by design – and when he’s home he nags Connie, a coupon enthusiast of the first order, to get a job, get out of the house, do something.
Jojo Johnson (Kirby Howell-baptiste, who starred with Bell in “The Good Place”), is Connie’s neighbor. She had her identity stolen a few years earlier and has struggled to overcome it. She lives with her mom and makes Youtube videos, trying to grow her brand, as she says often. It’s not clear what brand that is.
One day Connie, digging into one of the many boxes of Wheaties she’s amassed with her coupons, finds the cereal stale. She dashes off an angry email to the company and soon she’s rewarded with a coupon for a free box.
Ding. A light goes off, and soon Connie and Jojo are writing as many companies as they can, cooking up complaints and getting free stuff in the bargain. And what, they wonder, if they sell those coupons to other people?
This leads to an even bigger idea: most of the coupons are printed at a plant in Mexico. What if they could get coupons in bulk for free merchandise direct from the coupon manufacturer? They can, and they do.
The money comes in so fast they have to find a way to hide it. So they turn to the awesomely named Tempe Tina (Bebe Rexha, in her feature debut), the woman who stole Jojo’s identity years before. (They can vouch for her work, if nothing else.)
Of course, this doesn’t go unnoticed, and this is when the second movie kicks in. Ken Miller (Paul Walter Hauser, the king of the put-upon character) is a fraud inspector for a grocery chain that has several outlets in Phoenix.
Ken is a stickler for the rules, his enthusiasm belying the smalltime nature of his job. He starts getting complaints about coupons, and turns to the FBI (embodied by a perfectly smarmy and insincere Stephen Root).