Directed By Chris Addison

Starring – Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson, Alex Sharp

The Plot – Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway star as a pair of con artists plying their trade in a stunning seaside town in the south of France. Josephine Chesterfield (Hathaway) is a glamorous, seductive Brit with a sprawling home in Beaumont-sur-Mer and a penchant for defrauding gullible wealthy men from all corners of the world. Into her well-ordered, meticulously moneyed world bursts Penny Rust (Wilson), an Aussie who is as free-form and fun-loving as Josephine is calculated and cunning. Where Penny amasses wads of cash by ripping off her marks in neighborhood bars, Josephine fills her safe with massive diamonds after ensnaring her prey in glitzy casinos. Despite their different methods, both are masters of the art of the fleece so they con the men that have wronged women. Wilson’s talent for physicality and Hathaway’s withering wit are a combustible combination as the pair of scammers pull out all the stops to swindle a naïve tech billionaire (Sharp).

Rated PG-13 for crude sexual content and adult language

POSITIVES

– Heart of Hathaway. If there is any single redeemable quality about this film, it’s the work of the Grade-A actress, who chews up an overabundance of scenery on her way to another delightful performance. While the character itself wasn’t someone I could admire and hang my hat on for obvious reasons, the untamed energy of Anne showing off no fewer than three different accents for three completely different personalities highlights her range every bit as it does her investment into the picture, and there’s something deeply commendable about an actress who is so obviously better than this film, yet doesn’t let it dampen the work level that we’ve come to expect from her. Each time Hathaway was on-screen, the humor didn’t feel desperate, and just sort of fit into place because of, like her character, her commitment to the role. I’ve viewed it as a sequel to the character she played in “Ocean’s Eight”. Makes it slightly more entertaining that way.

– Doesn’t overstay its welcome. Even if you have as many problems with the material as I did, there’s a saving grace in the concept of this 89 minute movie being a quickly moving script that constantly maintains the pacing of the story. I was flabbergasted when I checked my watch to reveal only twenty minutes left in the film, and the screenplay’s direction to constantly keep the geography, as well as the evolution of the scams, is something that allows very few grace periods in the film, or even unnecessary padding. If this film were two hours long, it would be so much worse than it actually is, but screenwriter Jac Schaeffer is responsible for much of the consistent movement that maintains the energy of the shenanigans at place, and if it all were for a better movie, it would make “The Hustle” one of the easier sits of 2019.

– Spicy foreign flavor. Another great Anne in this production is that of Anne Dudley, the film’s musical composer, who instills a great sense of geographical reminder every time her notes of accompaniment strike the perfect sizzle for our traveling scenery. For French opulence, it’s obviously the inclusion of Accordion’s or Bombard’s to replicate the feel of romance in the air. For American style casino’s, it’s the slick evocation of electric guitars beating a similar vibe to that of a James Bond movie, in all of its jagged curves that signal ulterior motives in the atmosphere. They both offer a stirringly satisfying juxtaposition of compositional bliss that compliments the many invasive qualities of the cerebral sequences perfectly. Music is rarely complimented in comedies, but here the credit deserves center stage among the film’s rare better qualities.

NEGATIVES

– As a remake. It can be expected that many people aren’t aware that this is in fact a female spin on the 1987 film “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”, but what’s so viciously evident is how little this gender swap has on the weight and complexity of the film, that breathes new life into the treasured comedy. For most of the film, “The Hustle” is trying to pave its own way, outlining cons and character’s who don’t feel remotely familiar, and fleshing out a new direction to try to capitalize on the one track minds that males often possess. The problem though, is that the screenplay is never wise enough to offer proof for this pudding, with the exception of a few sleazy millionaires who are cartoonish levels of sex and greed. Aside from this, the motivation for Hathaway and Wilson’s duo never rises above just getting rich. There’s no shred of vengeance or anger behind Hathaway’s delivery that states that men find women too weak to be smarter than them. So despite it distancing itself from the material of the previous film, there’s not enough nuance in social commentary to make the heists not feel like they have the weight of a Saturday Night Live skit, and if anything it just further cements the appreciation for the original.

– Detestable personalities. I expected to lack indulgence for thieving character’s, but Hathaway and Wilson, as well as the supporting cast of one-off dopes, took my expectations to seething levels, if only for the film’s minimal view of the world outside of the upper one-percent. Wilson is her usual trashy self, complete with inappropriate vulgarity and unabashed horniness that wears thick early on. If you’ve seen one Rebel role, you’ve seen them all, and sadly after the shattering of typecast that was this year’s “Isn’t It Romantic”, the young actress has regressed in terms of acting depth. Hathaway essentially has no heart, and never really learns from her devious ways as the film concludes. She’s essentially a mean-spirited, conniving teacher who always must be one step ahead of her student, so that she isn’t forgotten. Aside from this colorful duo, the supporting cast of males are every bit as braindead as they are one-dimensional, making me wonder if the female switch-up has indeed learned anything from years of being presented as one consistent thing. As a male myself, there are very few films that offend me for my gender, and this is one of those rare exceptions, as instead of separating males into respective categories, the film groups us all together into one insensitive bracket, and it kept me from fully buying into the support of the duo’s thefts.

– Lifeless comedy. “The Hustle” made me feel like I lacked the ability to laugh and have fun in a movie theater. It’s an easily written, terribly telegraphed combination of set-ups and punchlines that beat a joke dead into the ground upon the third or fourth time that it is brought up again. Even worse than that, the air of improv comedy is back yet again for Wilson, who uses valuable screen time to stretch a punchline so far that it slowly wiped away what shred of effectiveness that it had for the poor souls in my theater who laughed upon initial delivery, then gave a decreasingly smaller laugh each time she would carry on with it. This is mindless humor at its most immature, and if it wasn’t for the remarkable investment from Hathaway that I elaborated on earlier, I wouldn’t have laughed a single time throughout this movie, and that’s a major problem for a film deposited in the comedy genre.

– As a feminist piece. I’m not trying to make “The Hustle” into something it’s not, but you’d be ignorant to see a plot about two women ripping off rich male counterparts without a single ounce of feminism in the atmosphere to their deceitful games, but sadly the film goes back on this concept so brutally that it practically feels like the biggest con is the one that the script plays on the pride of itself. MINIMAL SPOILER – The film eventually becomes about a rivalry between Hathaway and Wilson to sleep with this male character (Sharp), making me wonder who in fact is the disappointed party in this scenario. Is it the male? Yeah, because him having two women fighting over him will surely teach him a lesson. With films like this depicting the bond of feminism, I feel that an inevitable revolution is coming, and it’s one where female moviegoers will lash out on a generation of filmmaking that values their moral stamina as a bump in the road to male euphoria. If I were a woman, I wouldn’t support a movie like this.

– Horrendous green-screen visuals. Why does a movie like “The Hustle” even require special effects? Is the budget so minimal on this production that it can’t even convince itself of its champagne wishes and caviar dreams? There’s a series of takes midway through the third act where Hathaway chases a plane on a runway, where she is the only aspect that is actually real. What’s even worse is how poorly digitalized this sequence felt, where the lighting of Hathaway and the property surrounding her don’t look even remotely like they took place in the same day or place. Rendering like this is usually evident in natural disaster movies, but for a movie that requires this just to depict an airplane lifting off of the ground, really makes me lack believability in the riches of the story both in and out of the movie itself.

– Glaring plot holes. This movie made me think far too often than I’m proud to rightfully admit, but when a scene plays out that lacks logic in even the minimalist sense, I can’t turn my brain off to the point of it becoming a vegetable. There are many examples that I found throughout the movie, where the chain of events simply didn’t add up to what eventually transpires, but none more than that of my favorite hole in the movie. It happens when Wilson and Sharp are alone on a date, and Wilson faking her blindness makes up the name of a Russian doctor who she requires a surgery from to see again. Sharp looks him up, and even manages to find his website and Facebook, the latter of which reveals that he’s actually staying in the same hotel as them at that moment. It turns out to be Hathaway who made the site and becomes the doctor for this point on. Ok, even if you can overlook the fact that Hathaway made a believable website in three minutes tops, how in the living hell could she have known the name that was discussed in an isolated scene between Wilson and Sharp? What were they thinking?

– Problems with the ending. So much to unload on here, but there’s a late twist that happens with about ten minutes left in this movie, that not only did I see coming from a mile away when you think for too long about this particular character, but also does nothing for sending audiences home satisfied. The main problem is that so much develops in the final ten minutes of the film, that not only jars the dynamic and importance of the two woman rivalry, but also makes the very last two scenes of the film feel tacked on after writing an ending that no one at the studio felt accomplished with. It shoves so much into those closing moments, and it almost feels like the collection of DVD special feature endings that were all edited together to the finished product, throwing as much at the screen to once again get us back to a happy ending. What an anti-climatic mess.

My Grade: 3/10 or F