Movie Review: Jerry & Merge Go Large
Have you ever wondered what would happen if people found out there was a loophole that could help you win millions on a lottery site like Lottoland UK? Your guess is as good as mine. Most people would try to exploit it in order to pocket the jackpot money.
This phenomenon is very well depicted in the movie Jerry & Merge Go Large, where Jerry, a recently retired factory employee from Michigan, finds a loophole in a national lottery called WinFall and tries to exploit it using his exceptional maths skills.
The movie starts with Jerry’s family holding a small retirement party for him in his home, where they give him a boat as a retirement gift, which he one day accidentally damages the boat while trying to get it into the water. The event leads him to focus on other things.
Fast forward, Jerry appears at a local gas station, where he overhears a conversation about the lottery’s rolldown and realises the lottery has an exploitable loophole. Since nobody got all six numbers right, the $2 million jackpot would roll down and be distributed among those who matched 3, 4, or 5 numbers.
Hearing this, Jerry does some calculations and realises he could win the jackpot if he bought more tickets.
Using his newfound strategy, he turns $8,000 to $15,0700 and hides the money because he doesn’t want his wife Merge to know. In an expected plot twist, Merge finds out about his secret later on and is happy to inform him they could play the lottery together and have fun.
The couple starts buying thousands of lottery tickets in their local town and even goes on a drive to buy tickets from another state after their town runs out of tickets.
The two continued to double their money for some time, and after some consideration, they decided to share their secret with family and friends in their local town so that more people could join to improve their odds of making more money.
Through an accountant, the couple formed a corporation of bettors, allowing other people in town to join. The corporation helped them raise $40,000, which they used to double their investors’ money.
With everyone happy, Jerry and some investors decide to use some of their winnings to renovate some of the infrastructures in their town and provide employment opportunities for the town members.
However, a problem arises when a group of Havard students, led by a boy called Tyler, learn about the loophole. In a turn of events, Tyler manages to win $50,000. Taylor later learns about Jerry’s group and arrogantly asks Jerry to join his group. Jerry refuses, and the next morning, the student is seen threatening Jerry to quit or hack his accounts and take all the money if he refuses.
With Jerry shaken up, he meets with his shareholders and tells them he decides to quit. However, his son and town members strengthen his resolve. Jerry then goes to confront Tyler at Havard, informing his fellow college mates of Tyler’s plan to use them and deny them a share of the winnings, which leads to everyone quitting Tyler’s team.
Later on, Jerry is seen at a meeting in the Lottery headquarters, where he demands they disclose the size of the jackpot to stop any group from forcing the roll down, or he goes public about how they were using that flaw to make money for themselves.
In the end, a journalist writing about lotteries is seen with Jerry discussing how the latter spent nights in a hotel room and shared the winnings. With the news all over the media, the Massachusetts state lottery decides to faze out the lottery after one final drawing. Jerry’s corporation makes $27 million in the final drawing, which saw the couple return to Evart as heroes despite the lottery coming to an end.
This movie’s storyline is quite intriguing, with rather humane scenes revolving around Jerry’s retirement and his trying to use his maths skills to help his community. However, the challenges portrayed in this movie aren’t quite significant, which makes the film rather uncinematic.
Overall, Jerry & Merge Go Large is a fairly interesting movie with a human interest angle. According to Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 67% and an audience score of 78%.
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What could happen if there was a loophole on a lottery betting site like Lottoland? Read our latest movie review to see how a couple tried to exploit a lottery flaw and how they used some of the money to help their town.