Queenpins Review: Scamming Audiences with Sophomoric Humor and Dubious Politics

Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly’s Queenpins concerns two Arizona suburbanites, Connie (Kristen Bell) and JoJo (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), who hatch a scam to sell stolen coupons online as an extra source of income only to end up creating a multimillion-dollar criminal empire. The film is inspired by the true story of the largest counterfeit coupon scam in history, and there’s a conspicuous stiltedness to many of its scenes, namely the explanatory and expository way in which Connie and JoJo outline the moving parts of their operation, that suggests that it might have been better served as a documentary.

But worse than the sense that Gaudet and Pullapilly, whose background is in nonfiction filmmaking, may be using the wrong format to tell this story is the often painful humor that’s clearly informed by the belief that Connie and JoJo’s case is inherently quirky. Throughout, the filmmakers are constantly whipping up awkward gags that are seemingly intent on emphasizing that their characters are out of their league—like one bizarre scene involving a supermarket chain’s coupon enforcer, Ken (Paul Walter Hauser), having a bowel movement.

Because Connie and JoJo are essentially presented as victims of domesticity, the film also dubiously frames their scamming as an inevitably, a courageous exit strategy of sorts. For Connie in particular, the success of their enterprise finally gives her the confidence to divorce her dull husband, Rick (Joel McHale). And, unsurprisingly, the only characters here that don’t see the women as feminist crusaders are the two law enforcement figures, Ken and Postal Inspector Simon (Vince Vaughn), who are unimaginatively depicted as sticks-in-the-mud.

In a voiceover toward the end of Queenpins, Connie asks us to confront for ourselves the ethics of her and JoJo’s scam, as if considering a life of crime because you’re bored from the monotony of daily existence is a complex moral dilemma. But any inquiry on our part is ultimately pointless anyway, because the unambiguous reverence that Gaudet and Pullapilly harbor for their protagonists makes it crystal clear how they also want us to see them.