The Hustle
- Indi Brummelen
- May 9, 2019
- 2 min read
It may be a new take on the adored 1988 flick Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but Chris Addison's The Hustle is a whirlwind disaster, tasking its female stars with the impossible job of filling Michael Caine's and Steve Martin's shoes.
Taking to the screen with a premise that boasts being Oceans 8's less attractive, less funny younger sister, the film has a plot that zig-zags around two con-artists - one scams wealthy European heirs (Anne Hathaway), the other takes jabs at shallow men with beer guts in New York (Rebel Wilson) - who go head to head in scamming an innocent tech guru of $500,000.
By now we know that our resident Aussie likes to exploit the fact that she's curvier than most, and that isn't masked by Wilson in The Hustle either. Once again she is typecast as the self-deprecating comedian, only this time she goes by the name of Penny. She overcompensates with fat jokes and sexual comments to no avail, but oddly enough her song and dance is less irritating than usual.
Wilson also relies too much on obvious improvisation, a trait she was once praised for in her earlier films such as Pitch Perfect, but now the wisecracks only drag out to the point of awkwardness.
Hathaway's Josephine exhibits remnants of the actor's con-artist persona from Oceans 8, only this time she poses as a well-off fraud with a horrifically obnoxious English accent. Even though she has her good moments while interacting with Wilson, Hathaway's over-dramatization of her character comes close to being intolerable.
Despite the few laugh-out-loud moments, many of the jokes fall flat, diminishing the film from what could have been a comedic hit to a so-so spectacle that falls short of funny.
The Hustle comes as a disappointment with the highlights already exposed in the film's trailer. The real scam though is on those who pay the full price of admission for a flick that's forgettable and deflated.
Image: Christian Black / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures
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