The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
‘QUEENPINS’
Running a massive coupon scheme probably isn’t as fun as it seems in entertaining comedy
“Queenpins,” a fun comedy about a hugely profitable counterfeit coupon scheme, has such an easybreezy tone that you have to remind yourself from time to time that what its lead characters are doing is highly illegal. ¶ And Kristen Bell’s Connie Kaminski and Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s JoJo Johnson seem to know this — mostly, kinda, sorta — but they get past that pesky little fact from a mental standpoint pretty quickly. ¶ Loosely inspired by true events, with names having been changed to protect the, well, guilty, “Queenpins” is a largely entertaining affair, if not one with much to offer below the surface.
When we meet Connie — a former Olympic race walker — she’s in bad need of a win. Unable to get pregnant with IRS auditor husband Rick (Joel McHale), she has poured her energy into extreme couponing. As a result, a room in their home that was supposed to become a nursery is teeming with items such as $400 worth of detergent that Connie got for $57. (Rick is frustrated by her spending — their fruitless in vitro treatments were very costly — but she matter-of-factly explains to him when you can get this specific deal on Tide, you have to stock up.)
JoJo, a friend and neighbor in her Phoenix-area development, is similarly frustrated. She is trying to “build her brand” as a vlogger, but she constantly has to restart her recordings after they are interrupted by her highly unimpressed mother, Josie (Greta Oglesby), who lives with her.
After Connie realizes she can get valuable coupons from manufacturers if she writes to them to complain about their products, she convinces JoJo they could make a fortune if they could get their hands on a huge supply of such coupons.
They rope in a man (Francisco J. Rodriguez) who works for a tiny wage at a plant in Mexico where coupons are created after he is encouraged by his pregnant wife (Ilia Isorelýs Paulino) to steal the paper — and all the valuable bar codes — for them.
And although JoJo initially is hesitant about it, she and Connie contract cyber-criminal Tempe Tina (singer-songwriter Bebe Rexha), who formerly stole JoJo’s identity, which causes her credit problems to this day. Scenes in which Tina attempts to explain things such as how to move money around so as not to arouse suspicious to these novice criminals are particularly funny.
Those moments are matched in relative hilarity by many scenes shared by Vince Vaughn (“Freaky”) and Paul Walter Hauser (“Cruella”), as U.S. Postal Inspector Simon Kilmurry and grocery store chain’s loss-prevention officer Ken Miller, respectively.
Borrowing from his terrific performance in the titular role of 2019’s “Richard Jewel,” Hauser excels at the wannabe-cop thing in “Queenpins.” After being highly frustrated when the FBI won’t take his coupon concerns seriously, he gets an ally in Simon.
However, while postal fraud is no joke to Simon, he is at best bemused by Ken, first letting him help with the investigation out of pity but eventually finding him actually helpful in spots as they pick up the trail left by the ladies. A scene the two share in a car following an all-night stakeout is a big serving of guilty-pleasure fun, thanks to the performances of both men.
Bell (“Frozen,” “Bad Moms”) and Howell-Baptist — who appeared in several episodes of typically terrific NBC sitcom “The Good Place,” on which Bell starred — click together here. Again, you can’t help root for their characters, even if you wish they’d show a little remorse now and then.
Written and directed by husband-and-wife tandem Aron Guadet and Gita Pullapilly (“Beneath the Harvest Sky”), “Queenpins” may be little more than a pleasant way to pass a couple of hours, but it certainly is that. OK, it ultimately has a little something to say about this country’s criminal justice system, but that’s far from its main objective.
It may be worth a trip to the theaters, but — and this may be the mindset of a couponer rubbing off on us — it would be a better value down the line when it’s discounted for home viewing.