Josephine Chesterfield is a glamorous, seductive British woman who has a penchant for defrauding gullible men out of their money. Into her well-ordered, meticulous world comes Penny Rust, a cunning and fun-loving Australian woman who lives to swindle unsuspecting marks. Despite their different methods, the two grifters soon join forces for the ultimate score -- a young and naive tech billionaire in the South of France.
The Hustle is a film that I had reservations about; while I love Anne Hathaway, I find Rebel Wilson tends to play the same role in every film and it gets tiresome. Add the fact that the local cinemas only had a single screening per day at noon, it told me that the film was not proving too popular with the local audience.
My initial thoughts on the film were that the to-and-fro between Hathaway and Wilson were somewhat creative. As is the case with all other Rebel Wilson movies, you can expect a bunch of self-deprecating jokes alongside a large amount of slapstick and physical comedy.
After leaving the cinema and doing some research I learned of the film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It was a film that I was not previously aware of as it was released the year before I was born in 1988. The Hustle does not hide the fact that the film is a genderbent remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrel, but the reality that it copies not only the premise but the twists and turns of the original storyline too, stripping The Hustle of any remaining creativity that I had once thought it had.
I usually love Anne Hathaway, and she looks gorgeous on screen, but her performance as a hustler is just another version of Daphne Kluger (Ocean's 8) or Catwoman (Dark Knight Rises), except this portrayal is worse because it comes with a hideous Dutch accent that lacks any sense of authenticity at all. If nonsensical and over-the-top had been the consistent tone set of the film, that would be a different story, but the film constantly clashes between Hathaway's uptight classiness and Rebel Wilson's low brow antics.
This clash of styles is the only thing that elicits anything close to a laugh in this comedy film. The physical comedy proves to have no purpose beyond trying to get a laugh as it has no bearing on the storyline in the film. One-liners and self-deprecating humour is thrown in constantly, but contradicts itself constantly as well, causing you to question the effectiveness of these con-women at all.
That being said, while I let out nary a smile, there were a few women in the audience that were having a good giggle at certain points, so it seems to be humour that hits home better for the female audience, but falls flat for men.
The cinematography had some exquisite shots, and the score was surprisingly strong. There was certainly an opportunity here, but it seems like the goal was just a quick moneymaker, so as little work was done on writing the script as possible. The film had no character development arcs and made no changes to the story to account for the change in gender. This is simply a shot for shot remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with the genders swapped in the main cast. But with a small budget of only $21 million, you can't expect too much.
If you have not seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels before, and you really enjoy Rebel Wilson's style of fat/eating jokes then you will get some enjoyment from this. However, the charisma of the cast was unable to keep me engaged, and because of that, The Hustle becomes yet another "female-led" film that has been poorly made and will fade into obscurity very quickly.