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.
