Directed by: David Frankel
Starring: Bryan Cranston, Annette Bening, Larry Wilmore, Rainn Wilson, Michael McKean, Anna Camp, Uly Schlesinger, Jake McDorman
Jerry and Marge Go Large is based loosely on a true story in which a retired Michigan factory worker Jerry (Cranston) with a knack for mathematics and probabilities discovers a loophole in a lottery game which would guarantee lucrative wins. Jerry learns he can't simply buy one or two tickets, but if he withdraws thousands from his savings and buys thousands of tickets, that's where the big bucks come.
At first Jerry empties his bank account without telling his wife Marge (Bening) and stuffs his winnings in cereal boxes in the pantry, but soon she joins him in his quest to enrich themselves. Michigan soon does away with the lucrative game, but Massachusetts still plays it, so Jerry and Marge make weekly ten-hour treks to a gas station in the boondocks to buy and print out thousands of tickets. The gas station owner Bill (Wilson) soon becomes a partner in the actually legal scheme. The surprise is: Jerry and Marge don't use their winnings to buy mansions or travel the world, but to pay it forward and enlist their friends and town citizens to buy tickets and use the winnings to improve their town.
Jerry's and Marge's time as exclusive benefactors of this loophole is limited, as cocky, arrogant Harvard student Tyler Langford (Schlesinger) discovers the same loophole and uses it for self-enrichment. I don't know if Tyler is real or just a plot device added to create tension in a story where there isn't much or simply add an unnecessary villain. Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening provide us with a likable couple of retirees who find joyful purpose while counting thousands of tickets all night in a fleabag motel room. Most of the reason Jerry and Marge Go Large works as well as it does is because of Cranston and Bening and the goodwill they create in a story which doesn't add up to much and is overall marginally entertaining.
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