The Hustle
The trailers for “The Hustle” had me expecting a gender-reversed take on “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” but I did not expect an exact remake of the story, with just the genders and title changed up. That, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, and there is plenty of potential for that to work, but this movie fell flat for me.
We begin by meeting Rebel Wilson’s Penny as she is meeting a mark in a bar; she has posed herself as a smoking hot woman in online chats and texts, and when she gets there, she claims it is her sister he’s been chatting with. The con is actually working when the cops break it up. She gets away, but she realizes she needs a change of scenery, so she makes her way to Europe, where she meet Josephine (Anne Hathaway), who is well entrenched in a little town as a con artist. Penny is cramping her style, and they make a bet that, Josephine hopes, will get Penny out of her life for good. The mark is a tech millionaire (Alex Sharp); the cons they play will be familiar to anyone whom has seen the source material.
I’m not going to lie- I don’t know that I consider myself a Rebel Wilson fan. She had moments of hilarity in the first and third “Pitch Perfect” movies, but she was too prominent in the second film. And earlier this year, she was in “Isn’t It Romantic,” which was a decent vehicle for her, but I don’t know if she’s a good fit for leading roles. She’s at her best when she has quick-hitting jokes and just steps back from there. Here, she is basically in the Steve Martin role in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” and I’ll admit it’s a good fit, but the writers don’t really seem to do her any favors by just recycling jokes from the original. Maybe my biggest issues with Wilson come from the writing she’s given; this film, in particular, seems to go for easy jokes rather than actually giving her a real character to play. Anne Hathaway doesn’t have it any easier, though; she is in the Michael Caine role, and like Wilson, it’s a good fit, but the writing doesn’t really seem to know how to make these two funny, and it’s a shame, since both of them have the chops to make something like this funny. I was hoping to be able to enjoy this film, but the filmmakers didn’t do enough to make this take on a classic premise on par with what came before it. It was a disappointment.
