There are plenty of video games that have been turned into movies, but Paul Feig’s latest comedy feels like a movie that should be turned into a video game. After a slow buildup lasting just a few minutes, Jackpot! erupts into a nonstop series of action set pieces that manage the neat trick of being as funny as they are brutally violent. It’s all tremendously silly but somehow it works, thanks to combat choreography that would make Jackie Chan proud and the introduction of America’s premiere new comedy team, Awkwafina and John Cena.

What’s that, you ask? Awkwafina and John Cena? Well, yes, the diminutive, fast-talking actress is hilariously paired with the WWE star who’s somehow transformed himself into America’s most lovable big lug. (If you saw his nearly nude comedy bit at the Academy Awards, you know what I’m talking about.) Coming across like a modern-day Laurel and Hardy — if that legendary screen team had upped their violence quotient exponentially — the pair make this supremely dumb action comedy more enjoyable than it has a right to be.  

Awkwafina plays Katie, a former child actress famous for her work in a television commercial for canned spaghetti, who arrives in Los Angeles after a lengthy career hiatus caring for her sick mother. Unbeknownst to her, the city is now gripped with lottery fever — except that this particular game involves one person winning a massive cash prize totaling billions, only to get pursued for a day by everyone else, who can claim the money by killing them. There are no rules except one, namely that guns cannot be used. Katie would have known this if she had only seen the film’s opening scene, featuring a very amusing appearance by an ill-fated Sean William Scott.

While auditioning for an acting gig, Katie discovers a lottery card in her borrowed outfit and finds herself a winner. Since her picture is immediately flashed on every cell phone in the city, she becomes the target of everyone with whom she comes into contact, including the other actresses vying for the role and, even more dangerously, a roomful of martial arts enthusiasts.

Just as things are looking particularly dire, she’s rescued by Noel (Cena), a freelance operator in a dapper suit and white socks who offers to protect her for a percentage of the winnings. It’s a fairly frantic negotiation, since he presents the terms even while fending off throngs of attackers. That Cena and Awkwafina are able to go through their ultra-violent paces while simultaneously delivering a steady stream of wisecracks and one-liners is one of the film’s chief pleasures. It’s all the more fun because Cena’s Noel comes across as a nice guy, a sensitive type who sincerely wants to help people but also happens to have the ability to pummel them into submission without breaking a sweat.  

The rest of the frenetically paced film basically plays like a live-action Woody Woodpecker cartoon, with the pair relentlessly pursued by hordes of normal-seeming citizens who turn into bloodthirsty would-be assassins at the drop of a hat. Katie and Noel eventually wind up in a panic room in Machine Gun Kelly’s house (don’t ask), but when even that seemingly safe space threatens to be breached, Noel is forced to seek help from his professional archrival, Louis Lewis (Simu Liu, looking suitably smarmy in an all-white suit and turtleneck), with whom he has a tortured history. Not surprisingly, the alliance soon goes south.

This is not sophisticated entertainment, unless you count Cena stomping his massive foot on fire on a man’s crotch and apologizing, “It’s either a hurt dick or a burnt dick,” to be witty repartee. But Rob Yescombe’s screenplay features an ingenious premise and enough genuinely funny lines to make the film more than a guilty pleasure, as when Louis tells a bedraggled Noel, “You look like Wreck-It Ralph after a 14-hour cocaine bender.” Or when a drugged Machine Gun Kelly wakes up and asks, “Did I fall asleep in the pool again?” (Whoever advised the rapper-actor to make a self-deprecating cameo deserves a raise.)

By the time Jackpot! reaches its conclusion, you’ll be as exhausted as the characters, as the manic proceedings inevitably start to feel repetitive. But along the way there’s plenty of fun to be had, especially if you’re willing to put your brain on hold and embrace your nasty inner child.