Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Director: Chris Addison
Quick Impressions:
When I first saw the trailer for The Hustle, my immediate thought was, “Poor Anne Hathaway! Why can’t she seem to make any smash hits lately?” Based on what I saw, the movie looked doomed to fail utterly. But then I kept hearing people say they wanted to see it.
In fact, my husband wanted to see it. He’s a huge Anne Hathaway fan. I let him pick the movie this week, and we were both too scared to watch Tolkien. I love Tolkien’s fiction, and I’m also a fan of his edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Apparently, my husband wrote a report on him in seventh grade. And we both like Nicholas Hoult (more so than ever after The Favourite), but the trailer makes that biopic look meatless and disappointing. I feel like its pitch is, “If you’ve heard of The Lord of the Rings, then come see this more boring story that inspired it.” It hurts my soul to think of being disappointed by Tolkien. I’d rather watch Rebel Wilson pretend to be a bag of trash (like she does in the trailer for this kooky comedy). When you go in expecting material like that, there’s no emotional risk.
From the costumes, locations, and premise shown in The Hustle‘s trailer, I assumed this was a gender-flipped Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I figured even if they screwed it up horribly, I wouldn’t be disappointed because I’ve never seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I’m not sure why. I love Steve Martin and Michael Caine, and the box was always a fixture in the video stores of my youth. Maybe we never picked it up because I was always renting Clue.
At any rate, I also like Anne Hathaway. And I no longer find Rebel Wilson as grating as I did in Bridesmaids. (I really can’t stand her character in that movie, but she is good as Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect. And I was definitely on her side when she was accused of actually being her own age (which is very close to my age) as if it is a felony not to be the age which some people mistakenly assume you are!) (Even outright lying about one’s age is not exactly a capital crime!)
I’ll stop with the digressions here and say that The Hustle is intermittently hilarious, wildly uneven, and usually barely plausible. As my husband put it, The Hustle requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. Sometimes, I felt I had to suspend disbelief just to believe the level of suspension of disbelief it required. It’s almost like watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Stuff just happens because it’s funny. Of course Bugs Bunny knows how to sing opera! Didn’t you read the title of the cartoon? When Bugs shows up as the conductor (of an orchestra or train), just enjoy the ride! Put another way, The Hustle is like a geometric proof you’re tackling just to get your math homework done. Don’t waste time questioning the premises you’re given.
The whole time I was watching, I thought, “This movie is not exactly good, but I’m enjoying every minute. It doesn’t deserve a sequel, but I would pay to watch one, anyway.”
The Good:
Perhaps the movie’s strongest asset is its amazing, energetic, fun, feisty, caper-y score by Anne Dudley. When some scenes lack energy or some transitions between scenes are choppy, the score makes up for it. The lively music keeps everything zipping along and somehow convinces us we’re having fun. In that aspect, the film reminded me of a 1960s crime caper. The Pink Panther springs to mind, (possibly because of the animated title sequence) or even Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief (1955, admittedly). But I swear I’ve also seen so many less memorable crime caper movies of that era on TV at one time or another, and this score reminds me of their general vibe. (The glamorous, adventurous Riveria setting helps, too.) I think the 1988 Dirty Rotten Scoundrels itself is a remake, and I know there’s now also a stage musical. Perhaps Dudley’s score is evocative of the music in some other incarnation of this story. I can only wonder.
Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson also have surprisingly good chemistry, and the interplay of their characters is compelling. (Again, it’s a bit Bugs Bunny. It’s truly zany good fun to watch them going to outrageous lengths trying to best each other. Just don’t think too much about the reality of the situation.)
Watching Hathaway play so many different types of characters in her various cons is a pleasure because she seems to be having a lot of fun with it. I remember listening to her extremely respectful, informed approach to playing the Barbara-Feldon-originated 99 in the Get Smart movie, and since then I’ve noticed how much thought and care she puts into every character she plays. I can see why a project like this would appeal to her.
Rebel Wilson’s comedy is still sometimes a bit too broad for my tastes. (Maybe “broad” is the wrong word. She really leans into repulsiveness which I find problematic. As this film clearly wants to highlight, overweight women do have a hard time on blind dates. But if this character were a size 0, her bizarre, off-putting, borderline sociopathic behavior would still be a huge red flag to most people.) Sometimes, though, she’s really funny. And I must commend the way she commits to her character’s “disability” late in the film. I do like the thrust of her dramatic storyline. It’s quite well written, and some of its finer qualities would probably be even more apparent on a second viewing.
Also fantastic are supporting players Nicholas Woodeson, Alex Sharpe, and Ingrid Oliver. (Honestly, I wanted more of Oliver. Her character is intriguing and ultimately a bit mysterious. The actress has good timing and is surprisingly funny, usually as understated as Wilson is over-the-top.)
Best Scene:
The film’s strongest sequence is the bit with the doctor and the experimental treatment. This stretches out over several scenes and is all highly improbable, but entertaining, nevertheless.
One of the only moments with any emotional payoff comes when Penny hears what one late mark thinks of her. The film’s best scene comes just after this, when Penny explains when and how she decides she will take someone’s money. Hathaway’s character never gets a moment like this. I can never decide of this is a shame (i.e., the character needs more development) or if it’s kind of cool (i.e. the character is static, off-kilter, and mysterious).
Best Scene Visually:
The best visual joke is in the trailer, the “trashy dress” thing. That’s genuinely pretty funny. Certainly one of the most uncomfortable moments visually (also an effective scene) is that French fry test. Though crude and over-the-top as ever, Rebel Wilson is funny in the prison cell, too.
Best Action Sequence:
The training montage is funny, though largely nonsensical. (Of course, when you consider Hathaway’s character’s motivations, it does make a bit more sense. And also, many seemingly crazy moments in this movie do become surprisingly relevant later.)
Another moment from the trailer–with the gun and the musical laugh from Anne Hathaway–remains hilarious despite being spoiled.
The Negatives:
For me, the biggest problem with this movie is that Rebel Wilson’s character Penny is simply not convincing as a con-artist. I cannot believe she’s made $50,000 using the types of cons she pulls. (My husband pointed out that she could have made a pretty penny “falling” and then suing businesses. Perhaps, but it would take time to collect, and she seems to have impulse control issues.)
Now as far as Penny goes, the movie gives us a really good message (not only pro-feminist, but also just sensible advice for anybody). She spends 3/4 of the movie trying to scam men (whom she finds contemptible) with a sob story about the kidnapping of her hot, virgin sister. (She shows a photo.) At first this is a bit annoying. Yes, we get the point. Men lust after the imaginary hot sister and are horrified by the fact that she may be forced into a “less special” state of non-virginity. It is true that women are often objectified this way by men/society/whatever, but Penny really runs it into the ground. So initially, I was like, “I agree with her point here, and I’m sure the audience gets it, but I’m getting sick of this routine.”
To my surprise, however, the movie is actually quite smart about this. Late in the film, Penny is given the advice to focus less on the imaginary, “desirable” sister and more on the qualities that make her unique and interesting. (Granted, this happens in a strange way that might not be understood on an initial viewing.) But that really is solid advice for her. It helps her tremendously. The sister bit is pretty weak. The con she switches to when she drops the sister stuff is much better, her very finest conning. I actually love this (though there is an element of the delivery that makes it sort of problematic).
But what remains problematic is that the sister con is so dumb and unconvincing that nobody would possibly be taken in by it, particularly when Penny begins to abuse their charity so grotesquely which she always does first thing. (If someone rich offers to pay for your meal and may be willing to give you additional money, why would you order multiple entrees and appetizers and three pieces of cake? It immediately makes you look like a cheap, stupid con artist.) And even the most sexist, skeezy guys are not usually such far gone slaves to their lust that they would pay thousands of dollars to a stranger simply because someone shows them a picture of a relatively attractive woman.
I understand that Wilson is a comedian and always goes for the biggest laugh she can get, but she pushes so far and makes her material so outlandish that it no longer remains plausible, doing a disservice to the story.
Some of her “humorous” moments just go too far. They’re not funny. They’re unappealing. They don’t even make sense. (That bit in the airplane bathroom should not even be in the movie. And I think many of the Hortense scenes are not as funny as they want to be, though I love Hathaway’s laugh.) The outrageousness of Wilson’s character makes the story not work in places. (In fairness, though, other parts of the movie only work because of that same outrageousness.)
Another big problem with the story is that its cleverest element cannot be fully appreciated until it has already ended. On a second viewing, more people might realize, “Oh hey, that’s clever.” But if they didn’t notice the cleverness the first time around, they’re probably not going to watch the movie twice.
I also wish Anne Hathaway’s extremely aloof and mysterious character got more development. I don’t mind her strange British accent because she’s a con artist. If it sounds fake, it probably is, for the same reason Piers Brosnan is confounded by Mrs. Doubtfire’s accent. But I did want more of a look into her life, her past, her motivations, her goals, her weaknesses, her hopes, her dreams. The movie gives so much more insight into the Rebel Wilson character.
I also think a certain character mentioned again and again should turn out to be an A-list (or former A-list) actress seen in this film. When you build anticipation like that, the audience deserves a payoff. What the movie does is good, but I would go a step further.
I don’t expect this movie to do too well because typically audiences expect big studio movies like this to be formulaic to some degree, and this one kind of defies formula. What frustrates me is that the story would seem much less weird if it were about two men. (That makes me frustrated not with the movie, but with the way things have traditionally worked.) Two men are allowed to exist onscreen together in this type of story the way these women do, and it seems totally normal (or at least more normal). But when women are unvirtuous rivals this way, yet they’re not competing for the love of a man, it seems odd. Even if they were in love with each other, it would seem less odd. They’re not good. They’re not in love. They’re not sorry. They’re not on a crusade that will ultimately raise their wages or benefit their sick children. They’re not pregnant. (Are they even women? Most movie women are not like this.)
There really aren’t a lot of zany comedies about female criminals enjoying their kooky lives of crime. Obviously, in real life, women can participate in events just as men do. But in movies, joint female protagonists are usually (both) in love with somebody, regretful, remorseful, about to be dead, based on a true story, looking for a kidnapped child, trying to crack a case, discovering their sexuality, singing, trying to win a bake-off, Thelma and Louise…something like that. This premise and these characters are outside the box. That’s not a negative necessarily. In fact, it’s probably a hidden strength of the movie that may give it more legs than it deserves. But it is odd.
Also, sometimes The Hustle is too ridiculous to be taken seriously. The thing is, one minute, you think, “Hmm…this is just awkward,” but then the next, you’re laughing hysterically, genuinely amused. And the actors earn those laughs. The whole thing is extremely uneven. Then, too, there are parts that seem unbelievable on a first viewing that become entirely believable on a second (or in retrospect).
Despite all these issues, however, I felt happy during this entire movie and enjoyed watching the whole thing even when it became objectively bad. I would watch it again. (In fact, I think my daughter would like it, though some content might be a bit iffy for her.) (It’s actually less objectionable than you might expect, though. The PG-13 rating is appropriate. Most of the “naughty” elements are extremely juvenile.)
Overall: