Review: Caper comedy 'Queenpins' tries to make a farce out of crime, but can't deliver the laughs

The most criminal thing about the overly manic and oddly humor-free caper comedy “Queenpins” is the way it squanders the comic talents of so many actors with so little payoff.

“inspired by true events,” as the opening title card promises, “Queenpins” starts with two neighbors in a Phoenix, Ariz., suburb. Connie Kaminski (Kristen Bell) is a retired Olympic gold-medal race-walker whose efforts to conceive a child has left her and her husband, IRS auditor Rick (Joel McHale), in debt and barely speaking to each other. JoJo Johnson (Kirby Howell-Baptiste, once Bell’s castmate on “The Good Place”) is a would-be YouTube influencer who has signed up for a multi-level marketing scheme to get over the loss to her credit caused by an identity thief.

Connie’s penchant for clipping coupons proves to be the inspiration for their plan. They figure out that major corporations print their coupons for free stuff in Mexico, just over the border. So they meet a couple who works in the Mexican coupon printing plant, and arrange to have the presses’ overage shipped to them in Phoenix — and they can sell those coupons online to bargain hunters.

A theme in the script — by the husband-and-wife team of Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, who also directed — is that Connie and JoJo don’t immediately realize how much they don’t know about pulling off a fraud scheme like this. They learn fast, thanks largely to a cyber-hacker (played by the pop singer Bebe Rexha) who shows them how to set up dummy corporations and other tricks to hide their ill-gotten cash.

Meanwhile, the excess number of coupons gets the attention of the corporations, who complain to Ken Miller (Paul Walter Hauser, from “I, Tonya” and “Cruella”), the loss prevention officer for a supermarket chain. Ken, who lives in Salt Lake City, tries to get the local FBI field office interested, but the case gets shuffled around the bureaucracy — until it lands with the U.S. Postal Service, who send a dogged postal inspector, Simon Kilmurray (Vince Vaughn), to investigate.

Overplotted and underwritten, “Queenpins” stakes most of its comic hopes on some less-than-funny scenes, like Connie and JoJo figuring out how to spend their money, or watching Ken nearly ruin Simon’s stakeout with excessive bowel movements — a gag from which even Hauser, a reliably funny actor, can’t squeeze any laughs.

The only bright spot is Vaughn, who hits comic beats no one else in the movie seems to hear. Watching Vaughn play Simon as a no-nonsense lawman with a hidden poetic streak suggests the smarter, funnier movie “Queenpins’ could have been.

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‘Queenpins’

★1/2

Opens Friday, September 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout. Running time: 110 minutes.