'Queenpins': Kristen Bell's Comedy Is A Shockingly Well-Paced Crime Film With A Thoughtful, Emotional Core [Review]

What Walter White did for cooking crystal meth, Connie Kaminski hopes to do for couponing—or at least, that’s the premise behind Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly’s “Queenpins,” starring Kristen Bell. Based (loosely) on a true story, the film follows suburban Arizona housewife Connie (Bell) and her best friend Jojo (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), who meet and bond over their love of extreme couponing. Unfulfilled by their day-to-day lives and struggling financially, the duo hatch a plan to sell coupons. What started as a hobby quickly becomes a multi-million dollar operation that catches the attention of loss prevention officer Ken (Paul Walter Hauser) and postal inspector Simon (Vince Vaughn).

Though the film’s posters and trailers seem to bill it as a raunchy comedy a-la “Bad Moms,” that’s undoubtedly selling the film short because though it certainly has its fair share of comedic beats, the true meat of “Queenpins” comes by way of its well-paced crime drama and remarkably thoughtful emotional core. As we quickly learn, Connie is in a loveless marriage with her husband Rick (Joel McHale), who ironically works as an auditor for the IRS. Their relationship has been strained ever since Connie (a former Olympic racewalker) found herself unable to have a baby and to seek to fill the emotional void; she takes up couponing.

With the knowledge that Connie is a grieving mother desperately seeking a way to feel validated and empowered in a world where she can’t buy the one thing she wants most—a child of her own—the events of “Queenpins” take on a new light because no matter how silly or off-the-wall things get, we have an innate attachment to and sympathy for Connie that helps ground the film and provide a steady emotional through-line. While some embellishments are surely made when it comes to the brass tacks of just how two Arizona moms were so quickly able to create a million-dollar couponing ring, the story is still well-paced enough that it makes for an engrossing crime drama. Connie and Jojo’s swift rise to power (and just as swift fall) is so entertaining that it more than pulls the weight for where the comedy beats fall flat—and boy do they fall flat.

The gags in “Queenpins” are, for the vast majority of the film, composed of lowest common denominator jokes that feel straight out of a middle schooler’s playbook—a disheartening number of bodily fluid-related jokes that are beyond predictable and so overused it makes one question how they made it into the final draft of a theatrically released comedy. Every now and then, though, there are glimmers of genuine wit, nearly all of which come by way of gags that bleed through from the narrative side of things, including a particularly memorable dance sequence with Howell-Baptiste.

Nobody in “Queenpins” gives a career high performance, but Kristen Bell makes for a solid lead—once again managing to strike the right balance between anchoring a project’s sizable emotional beats and still lending levity where necessary. To her credit, though, when the film takes time to give Connie quiet ruminative moments in all the chaos, Bell gives a genuinely moving performance, and both she and the writing are remarkably thoughtful for what could’ve been an otherwise unremarkable comedy.

Her partner in pink-collar crime is Jojo (Howell-Baptiste), who receives remarkably less depth and a smaller narrative arc than Connie but makes up for it by delivering a majority of the film’s best jokes. Though admittedly there are few, it’s hardly Howell-Baptiste’s fault, and to her credit, she does everything in her power to bring charm to the subpar gags. The film also marks the acting debut of pop singer Bebe Rexha (who plays Connie and Jojo’s criminal guru, Tempe Tina), but Rexha is so stiff, and Tina is such an unremarkable role that it’s doubtful any long-term career change is in the cards.

The film’s other duo is hot on their tail—Vaughn and Hauser, who do little more than pad the film’s runtime and hammer cheap, uninspired gags into the ground. Though there needs to be a cat in order to have a cat-and-mouse narrative, Vaughn and Hauser bring “Queenpins” to a screeching halt whenever they’re onscreen, bogging the narrative down and hardly ever pulling their weight. Hauser is serviceable but barreling quickly towards being typecast, and Vaughn feels entirely unnecessary—cutting his character could’ve saved the filmmakers a few million dollars and audiences roughly 15 minutes of their time.

When push comes to shove, “Queenpins” isn’t all that funny, but what it lacks in side-splitters it more than makes up for with a well-paced, remarkably well-written crime adventure about a pair of suburban women in over their heads and looking for a way out of middle-class banality. While it’s hardly the funniest film of the year, the based-on-a-true-story couponing antics and thoughtful look at motherhood and grief make “Queenpins” worth the watch. [B-]

“Queenpins” arrives in select theaters on September 10.