Not everybody will be onboard with gender-swap remakes of classic movies because of the exaggeration will hit a high, and the number of dislikes from the trailer on YouTube indicates otherwise. Granted, most don’t like things being touched already. The Hustle is the latest do just that as it conned me part of my early afternoon.
What’s the Story: Josephine (Anne Hathaway) is a wealthy con artist with high class that’s capable of stealing from men out of their money. She decides to teach Penny (Rebel Wilson), a low rent con artist in the arts of scamming with perfection. They team-up to swindle a young, tech mogul (Alex Sharp) out of his money.
A gender-flipped remake of 1988’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with Steve Martin and Michael Caine, which is itself a remake of 1964’s Bedtime Story with Marlon Brando and Davis Niven, there a little bit of potential to be found in here. Maybe it could be a surprise since the trailers weren’t selling me. But when a comedy like The Hustle doesn’t leave me smiling after its 93 minutes, then you know it’s meant to be horrible.
Maybe the performances and charisma of its two leads might save this trainwreck of a comedy, not really. Both Hathaway and Wilson have been proven to be good in other comedies in the past, but the chemistry isn’t there, and it’s almost embarrassing. These are the kinds of character I didn’t care about. Hathaway’s character is using this unnecessary English accent, and it wasn’t working. Not only that, but motivation throughout this is unclear. Remember how she was entertaining in last year’s Ocean’s 8? Good times. And this is probably one of the few times Wilson was annoying as she continues to play the same character again. Wilson almost outgrew that when she was in Isn’t It Romantic earlier this year.
Did I make an effort to even laugh at this? Absolutely not since every joke in here falls flat completely and tasted my patience. All of them tried too hard to be either unrefined or. I almost chuckled at least one time, and it just became unfunny afterward. They really tried to make being blind humorous for almost 20 minutes. Did I also mention a stupid training montage that’s dull? Because there is one.
There could’ve been a funny story in The Hustle about these people trying to one-up each other in trying to grab the attention from the tech-guy. Yet, this is the kind of premise that’s been done over-and-over again to no effect. Considering it was script was written by four different people that’s a bad sign. Plus, how many times can there be fat jokes whenever Wilson’s in a movie? Tiresome, right?
It’s early to see The Hustle as the top contender as the worst movie of 2019, but I can’t wait to see in something more worse can come close. What a waste of time for anybody to be involved with this all for the sake of being a pointless remake. Just watch better con movies like Matchstick Men and enjoy it. If these two ever work again later on, please let it be better than whatever this tried to be.
Grade: F
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson, Alex Sharp, Dean Norris
Director: Chris Addison
Writer(s): Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning, Dale Launer, Jac Schaeffer
Runtime: 93 Minutes
Studio: MGM Pictures
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