You shall not steal.  That is the entirety of Exodus 20:15.  There is no ambiguity in those four words.  If something is not yours, nothing can make it yours without some kind of equitable exchange.  Generally speaking, before the advent of money, we bartered for items.  Money was adopted because it is wildly inefficient, especially in modern times, to raise a yard full of potatoes if I want to pay for my internet.  The Bible covers this, too.  In Mark 12:17, Jesus responds to Pharisees trying to trap him into saying something unlawful regarding the legality of paying taxes to gentiles by saying, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  One can look at this as meaning that money has its place in society, even if it sometimes feels evil or like you never have enough of it.  Faith in God will redirect you to Exodus 20:15 if you have the latter of those sentiments.  Yet, is it okay in extreme circumstances to bend those rules a little, as Queenpins (2021) would suggest?  Let us explore this idea by taking a closer look at this remarkably intricate story.

You would not expect Connie Kaminski (Kristen Bell) to have her home burst into by armed federal agents as occurs at the beginning of Queenpins.  As most of her life would indicate, she is somebody who is motivated and passionate, having a cheerful personality to boot.  She is a former Olympian, too, having participated in competitive speed walking.  Unfortunately, events conspired against her.  She and her husband, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) auditor Rick Kaminski (Joel McHale), were unable to conceive a child.  As a Catholic, I would applaud their desire to start a family, but stay tuned.  They resorted to several fertility measures that, instead of resulting in a successful pregnancy, brought them thousands of dollars in bills.  To save money, Connie turned to couponing, converting what would have been their child’s nursery into a storeroom for the stockpile of goods she obtains from saving all those pennies.  The example they show is her turning a nearly $200 trip to the grocery store into costing less than $20.  This does not make her popular with cashiers.  She does have an ally and partner, though, in Joanna “JoJo” Johnson (Kirby Howell-Baptiste).  When JoJo is not clipping coupons with Connie, JoJo is putting out videos on YouTube giving saver tips.  She also sells cosmetics specifically geared towards African American women.  She has the entrepreneurial spirit, but she has one problem: her credit is awful owing to her identity being stolen.  Running a cash business in the twenty-first century is not the easiest of enterprises.  They have their troubles, but they also share a love of the thrill they get when they are able to save money or, even better, get something for free.  This last bit happens for Connie.  One day, while comforting her sorrows over her lost baby with a box of Wheaties, she finds the flakes stale.  Upon writing to General Mills, the manufacturer of the cereal, they send a letter with a voucher for a free box of their breakfast food.  The sense of victory that she has when cashing it in, as well as JoJo’s astonishment over their find of a free package of toilet paper, gives Connie an idea.  These coupons have a monetary value.  What if they were to find a way to obtain a supply of them and sell them for a profit.  They are able to find the company that prints the coupons, which operates out of Chihuahua, Mexico.  Once there, after studying the employees coming and going from the warehouse, they decide to approach Alejandro (Francisco Rodriguez) and Rosa Diaz (Ilia Paulino).  Connie and JoJo convince their Mexican husband and wife acquaintances to provide the coupons for free items that the Americans would then sell to people on the internet.  It proves lucrative until two problems occur.  First, the large amount of money they start bringing in is flagged by the bank as suspicious.  To help with this problem, JoJo suggests they seek the help of Tempe Tina (Bebe Rexha), the computer hacker who had stolen JoJo’s identity.  Tempe Tina agrees to meet with the two clear amateurs and to help them because she sees them as thumbing their noses at the system.  Primarily, Tempe Tina has Connie and JoJo to diversify their money, and use JoJo’s cosmetics business as a front.  With Tempe Tina’s assistance, these two suburban Phoenix women bring in over $5 million in a few weeks. Unfortunately, the sudden rash of these coupons comes to the attention of Ken Miller (Paul Walter Hauser), a loss prevention officer for the grocery store chain where Connie shops.  He may not be well liked, but he is able to tell there is something off about these vouchers.  Given the apparent scope, his pleas for help from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) go ignored until they learn that Connie and JoJo are using the United States Postal Service (USPS).  Ken is elated to be told that there will be “boots on the ground” to find the culprits.  Instead, he gets United States Postal Inspector Simon Kilmurry (Vince Vaughn).  Ken is deflated by Inspector Kilmurry, but the latter’s gravitas proves itself.  Inspector Kilmurry is also able to figure out the city where the coupons are being mailed from, and, perhaps more importantly, rein in Ken’s enthusiasm.  As for Connie and JoJo, without any further guidance from Tempe Tina, they opt to clean their “dirty” money by buying items to sell, an idea Connie got from one of Rick’s cases.  They go on a spending spree that is not discovered by Tempe Tina until it is too late for the hacker to warn the white collar criminals.  At the same time, Ken and Inspector Kilmurry learn of Connie and JoJo’s identity and make the arrests.  Because Connie believes herself to be the main culprit, she takes most of the blame.  It also does not hurt that she is able to pay for an expensive lawyer to get them both light sentences instead of the forty years to life suggested by Inspector Kilmurry.  She also uses those funds to divorce an unsympathetic Rick, and get JoJo started on basically the same business that got them jail time, but this time based in Montenegro.

Given the amount of money these Queenpins were able to garner, Ken and Inspector Kilmurry are disappointed that the women got off so easily.  JoJo is given a ten-day sentence, which is suspended due to time served.  As for Connie, she is handed eleven months, though she serves eight with good behavior, with a year’s probation added.  It is Inspector Kilmurry who recovers from his shock first, giving Ken an important pep talk.  Before leaving, he tells the loss prevention officer that they did the best they could.  This is great for Catholics and Christians to remember.  Modern society and culture present an uphill battle in leading the kind of life that will hopefully get us into Heaven one day.  There are scams like selling coupons for free stuff on the internet, or solving your infertility problems with in vitro fertilization (IVF).  I bring up that last one specifically because that is how Connie gets around her issue with conception.  The Catholic Church is against this process that, in its simplest terms, takes a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm and brings them together in a petri dish, causing fertilization.  There are a number of issues with this that I will not get into, but if you want more information on the Church’s stance on this issue, I recommend going to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop’s web page and reading up on the matter.  The broader issue that I am concerned with, which aligns with getting rich by stealing, is deciding that the rules are unfair when you do not have what you feel you need.  Please understand that I am not here to lecture anyone on their particular needs.  The most general response I can give to such issues is that God is truly all anyone needs.  Yet, not everyone is called to rely on Him in the same way.  Male and female religious have different priorities than a family of four, for instance.  What will take anyone far, no matter their situation, is the kind of attitude that Connie has throughout.  She knows what she is doing is stealing, and I would rather not condone that or her divorce and use of IVF.  Still, one does not become an Olympian, or get to Heaven, by being idle with a poor attitude.

While watching Queenpins, I tried to gauge how sympathetic I was feeling towards Connie and JoJo.  They seem like nice enough people, and in the end, the companies from which they stole essentially saw them in this light.  Further, Connie is made to be even more appealing with her pregnancy at the end.  The Church might not be onboard with IVF, but it does see the children conceived in those situations as people worthy of God.  Hence, this one is tricky as to whether I recommend it.  I leave it to your discretion.