Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a comedy film from 2021, titled Queenpins.
Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care. In Phoenix, Arizona, suburban housewife
Connie is arrested in the middle of the night at her own house. As she gives up without a fight,
she remembers how all this got started months ago. Connie is a former three-time gold-medal-winning
Olympic racewalker, but this isn't the kind of thing that makes you rich or famous.
Nowadays she lives with her husband Rick, an IRS auditor she has a very tense relationship with.
Because they weren't capable of having children, they spent a lot of money on treatments,
but sadly, when Connie finally got pregnant, she lost the baby. That's when Rick decided to
take a traveling position at work, so he can be away for three weeks every month.
When he's home, he doesn't treat Connie well, constantly reminding her that she's jobless,
that they lost money because she wanted to do multiple treatments when he was ready to give up
after the first one, and scolds her for spending too much money on her obsession with coupons.
That bit about an obsession is real: Connie hoards coupons and then buys things in large quantities,
putting it all away in the nursery to cover the walls and forget about her loss.
The good side of Rick not being around so much is Connie getting the chance to befriend
her neighbor Jojo, who has a Youtube channel about saving tips and is coupon obsessed too.
She lives with her mother Josie and is having trouble finding work because her identity got
stolen not so long ago. In her free time, she flirts with the mailman Earl and sells
make-up door to door, which isn't going very well either. Whenever Connie goes to the supermarket,
she gives cashier Greg dozens of coupons for her purchase. It holds back the line for a while,
but it also means her final ticket goes from over a hundred dollars to sixteen. Connie always likes
to say that if you watch the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves. One afternoon,
while putting away the groceries on the shelves, she gets upset when she sees the baby wallpaper
among the boxes, so she decides to eat a bunch of cereal as if it could heal her depression.
The cereal turns out to be stale, so Connie uses all her current inner anger to send a complaining
e-mail to the cereal company. A few days later, Connie receives a coupon for free cereal in the
mail with a letter from the company apologizing for the stale product. When she goes to the market
to exchange it with a smug attitude, Greg explains she isn't special, all companies will send free
coupons to people that complain. This inspires Connie to send a bunch of letters to different
manufacturers even if there wasn't anything wrong with the products, which earns her a huge pile
of coupons for free stuff. Connie shows them to Jojo, who is shocked to see such a strategy and
even tries to buy a coupon from Connie because it would still be cheaper than the actual price. Her
offer makes Connie realize selling stuff she got for free would give her 100% profit and it
would make for a great business. After searching the internet, she discovers that the coupons are
made in Mexico, not far from where she lives, so they could go and steal a bunch to resell. Jojo is
skeptical at first, but since she's drowning in debt, she accepts to help. Meanwhile in Nevada,
loss prevention officer Ken is doing his job at a local market. When a cashier has trouble with a
coupon, he checks it out and quickly realizes it's fake. The manager asks if they can honor it anyway
because the old lady has been their client for decades, but Ken refuses because rules are rules.
Ken's manners are incredibly poor, earning him some insults from the old lady.
A similar situation happens later when he gets on a plane to return home - a mother asks him if
he could please switch seats with her daughter so she can watch the landing to help her calm down,
but Ken refuses like a twat, saying it's an important lesson for the kid to learn. When he
finally arrives at his lonely apartment in Utah, Ken yells at the tv in frustration. The next day
in Mexico, Connie and Jojo make it to the coupon factory and watch the employees end their shifts.
They decide to approach Alejandro and Rosa, a couple that is already breaking the rules
but doesn't look too dangerous. The duo follows the couple with the car and they think they're
about to get robbed, but after Connie and Jojo clarify they're there for help, they are welcome
at Alejandro's house to have a little chat. It turns out Rosa is pregnant and their salaries are
a joke, so it's easy for Connie and Jojo to come forward with their offer: if the couple steals
coupons for them, they will resell them later in the USA and share part of the profits. Alejandro
isn't sure it's a good idea, but Rosa convinces him to do this for the sake of their baby.
Making a plan isn't too difficult: the factory is divided into printing, where Alejandro works, and
redemption, where Rosa works. Each side usually doesn't know what the other does. With every
coupon they print there's always an extra that is supposed to get destroyed, but Alejandro can
ship those extras to Connie and Jojo when their trucks do their distributions around the USA.
There will be no problems at the border because they'll only see a box with coupons, not illegal
activity. A few days later, the duo gets their first box with coupons, so they make a simple
website to sell them and promote it on Connie's channel. Their business quickly becomes a success,
earning them tons of money, but the supermarkets soon start noticing too. Ken receives dozen of
letters and phone calls from managers complaining about all the money they're losing, so he begins a
thorough investigation until he can find a credit card number behind one of the many purchases made
with these coupons. After eleven days of work, Ken goes to see the housewife that used this
coupon and learns about the website that sells them, promoted by a black woman on Youtube. When
Ken returns to the office and opens the website, he finds the motto "if you watch the pennies,
the dollars will take care of themselves". Back to the duo, they're upset to find their Paypal
account has been frozen because it's received too much money too quickly. To unfreeze it,
they need to prove they're running a legitimate business. They don't know how to do this properly,
so in their desperation, they decide to contact Tina, who is a famous hacker on the dark web.
Tina scolds them for promoting this so freely because it can be all traced back to them,
so after deleting Jojo's videos, she explains they need a front for their business so they can clean
their money. They'll get a bunch of fake IDs, bank accounts, and a stash house to work in, also,
they must wait six months before spending their money so every connection they've established to
their real names can have time to disappear. After agreeing Tina will get ten percent for her help,
she gives them a special encrypted USB stick for them to keep their important files in.
Thanks to Tina's quick thinking, there are no clues left on the internet for Ken to follow.
He goes to the FBI and gets told they'll look into it, but actually, they find a problem with
coupons to be laughable, so they throw the case to their lowest desk worker Albert. Since he has
nothing better to do, Albert accepts the case. Using JoJo’s cosmetics brand as a cover and
Tina's fake IDs, the coupon scam begins growing into a very profitable business again while Ken
leaves messages for the FBI every day. Six months later, the duo is ready to spend their money, but
they remember Tina said it's dirty, so they have to clean it first. Remembering a story of Rick's
about a client of his, Connie decides that they need to buy lots of expensive stuff to be resold
later, and the money from those sales will be seen as clean. After convincing all the banks to
give them the money in cash because it's to hire people for their cosmetic business, Connie and
Jojo go on an incredibly expensive shopping trip: they buy sports cars, boats, a private plane,
and even guns. Afterward, they take a trip to Las Vegas, where they discuss their future plans:
Jojo will pay for her mother's mortgage, and Connie wants to try the fertility treatment again.
Meanwhile, Ken finally receives the call from the FBI he's been waiting for. Albert informs
him he can't do anything on the internet because an expert has deleted all cookie trails, but since
the coupons are being sent through old regular mail, he'll send someone that can actually help.
Two days later, Ken meets Simon, a postal inspector. Simon accepts the case and asks Ken
to order some coupons from the website so they can take a good look at the system. When the envelope
arrives a couple of days later, Simon quickly notices the envelope says it's from Kansas but it
actually comes from Arizona thanks to the special numbers on the online stamp. He will be flying to
Phoenix soon and agrees to take Ken with him since he already knows all the supermarkets in the area.
Back to Connie, she makes an appointment at the fertility clinic and takes Jojo with her
for support because she's hasn't told Rick she's doing this. The doctor informs her
this is her last shot, so Connie decides to use a donor's seed instead of her husband's.
Later in the evening, Tina contacts them again to know where all the money has gone and gets very
angry when she hears their reasoning because they missed the point: by using Jojo's cosmetics brand,
they had already cleaned the money. Now they must sell everything they bought as soon as possible
and put it back in the bank in small amounts per day. When Rick comes back from his latest
business trip, he notices the new tv Connie has bought, so she tells him she's gotten a sales
job and that she doesn't use coupons anymore. This greatly pleases Rick, who calls her a "new
wife", which makes Connie even sure to go through the treatment with a donor's seed.
In the meantime, Ken and Simon are interrogating all the cashiers in the area, asking for any
clients with coupon obsessions. When they get to Greg, they find the information they need: he
doesn't know Connie's name, but he gives them her description and mentions her two pennies motto,
which Ken remembers having seen on the website. The next day, they go to the local post office to
see if any of the workers knows anything about a coupon blonde. Nobody remembers Connie, but
when they hear the word coupons, they snitch on Earl because he always was watching Jojo's saving
tips on Youtube. Back to the duo, selling all their stuff on eBay is becoming too hard because
there's so much of it. When they go to a café for a drink they find two men from a gun club, so they
get their club's address and visit it later with all their weapons for sale. Jojo makes an amazing
sales pitch but the leader still refuses to buy them, so the duo agrees to make them a
good discount if they buy them all, sealing the deal. Ken and Simon interrogate Earl in private,
but he refuses to give them any information. Once he's released, he goes to Jojo's house and leaves
her a note in an envelope disguised as regular mail among the bills which Josie takes without
understanding how important it is. What Earl doesn't know is that Ken and Simon have followed
him there, and now they'll do surveillance outside the house for as long as they need.
Night has fallen by the time Jojo comes home, and the men realize this is the black woman the
housewife had seen on that Youtube video when Jojo comes out of her car and begins dancing in the
middle of her driveway to celebrate the amazing deal she made earlier. The next morning, Jojo is
distracted by an argument with Josie and pays no attention to the mail, so she drives to the stash
house as usual. Ken and Simon follow her there and see Connie as well, realizing she's the blonde
from Greg's description. Simon gathers other postal inspectors to begin the operation properly,
and now they have more details, it's very easy for them to find Connie's and Jojo's identities,
especially when they show a picture to Greg and he confirms it. Later that night,
Jojo can't sleep, so after checking on her mom, she goes to the kitchen to get a snack.
That's when she finally finds Earl's note urging her to leave town, but it's too late:
Simon arrives with his men and arrests Connie, Jojo, and Josie. After their homes and the stash
house are raided, the arrest appears on the news, and Earl is surprised to see Jojo's face on tv.
When the interrogations begin, Rick and Josie quickly say they had nothing to do with it and
accept to cooperate with the authorities. Jojo tries to play the innocent card and pretends
she doesn't know what they're talking about, but they've found her videos on her computer.
Connie, on the other hand, admits her crime, but she's shocked to hear that they may be facing
forty years to life for fraud. If she takes full responsibility for starting all of it,
they'll go easier on Jojo, so Connie accepts the deal. Jojo is released on bail - she thinks Josie
paid it, but it was actually Earl, who is waiting for her outside with flowers.
Sadly, Connie isn't as lucky - Rick only visits her to scold her and refuses to pay the bail,
so Connie asks for a divorce. The investigation continues and the inspectors trace the coupons
back to Alejandro and Rosa, but by the time they discover this, the couple has already disappeared.
Since the trail has gone cold, the Mexican government won't go after them.
Connie hires a rather expensive lawyer, and this proves to be the right decision: on the day of the
trial, the lawyer convinces everyone that Connie and Jojo just made use of a loophole the same way
corporations do all the time. His tactic is a success and Jojo gets ten days in prison plus
one year of probation, while Connie gets eleven months in jail with the possibility of parole.
Simon and Ken aren't happy with this result and demand answers from the state attorney, who
explains the judge went easy on the women because the brands on the coupons pressed for leniency to
avoid bad press. For such megacorporations, the eighty million dollars this scam cost them is
just pocket change. Now the case is over, Simon must leave, but first, he tells Ken he's a good
man and he's glad to have worked with him, but he also needs to dial down the attitude a little.
As days pass, everyone's lives change. Ken begins being a little nicer, making exceptions for old
clients with fake coupons and finally gathering the courage to make a profile on a dating app.
Connie gets the divorce she wanted and the fertility treatment turns out to be a success,
so she spends her months in prison with a big pregnant belly. The authorities take most of the
scam's earnings, but luckily, they ignore the boxes in the nursery thinking it's just food,
so Jojo gets to rescue those boxes, knowing Connie has been hiding cash in them all along.
After getting together with Earl, he and Jojo move to Montenegro,
a non-extradition country, to start a new scam under another cosmetics brand,
waiting for Connie to come over when she's finally freed so they can work together again.