The Lottery (II) (2016) User Reviews

Short, to the point, inspiration

[maddymarkss · 7/10 · 28 April 2020]

Its no secret that Shane Dawson's content has improved immensely throughout his years, this is a very good start to his film career. It tells a little inspirational tale of an event in his childhood to what his life became, being able to give back to his mother and finally making his dream a reality. Definitely worth a watch.

Story of a Youtube celebrity's life

[Horst_In_Translation · 2/10 · 22 February 2019]

"The Lottery" is a 16-minute live action short film from 2016 and this one was co-directed and written by Shane Dawson, the guys this is about. His work here scored almost 10 million views on Youtube already in slightly over 2 years, which may sound a lot of clicks, but given his popularity on the world's biggest video website, it does not seem too much to me. Quality-wise, it actually should be considerably less attention. I must say it was a tolerable, not good though, watch until around the 12-minute-mark. Yeah honestly, the idea of them looking forward to the safe lottery win was not too great admittedly, but Missi Pyle, a fairly well-known actress, somehow made it work and the other cast members, Eve Segal in particular weren't bad either. So at that point it would have been 4 stars out of 10 from me. But the reference to the now is just really cringeworthy to watch. Dawson eventually shamelessly promoting his book is not helping either. At all. But the worst moment was probably when he gets this house for his mother and walks her in (she is still played by Pyle) and man that was painful to watch almost. When I heard the voiceover that God's message to her that she would win the lottery did come true, just a few years later, I was really about to close this film. And I never do. So yeah, the script here is weak early on, but gets truly terrible the longer it goes. I still have no doubts that Dawson's many fans on Youtube sucked it in, maybe even saw somethin inspiring in this movie. But in reality, it was all just pretentious make-believe. Highly, highly not recommended and it is always aching to watch somebody so full of himself act like a saint and altruist do-gooder. Heavy stuff. Stay far far away.