THE HUSTLE – Review

Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson team up for the terrible new comedy THE HUSTLE. Bewitched and bamboozled, men tend to make fools of themselves around this pair, con artists plying their trade in the French Riviera. Glamorous and cunning Josephine Chesterfield (Hathaway) has a talent for defrauding gullible wealthy men from all corners of the world.  The more fun-loving Penny Rust (Wilson) is an Aussie who fleeces her marks in neighborhood bars. Despite their different methods, they team up in France to swindle a naïve tech billionaire (Alex Sharp). Bank accounts are emptied, true love is declared, and common sense left in the gutter.

THE HUSTLE feminizes the perennially male profession of con artists. This might seem like a fresh take if we hadn’t just seen women con artists (including Ms Hathaway!) in OCEANS EIGHT a few months ago. There’s little to keep you entertained here as Hathaway and Wilson go through their comic set pieces in routine fashion while the film moves mechanically from one contrived situation to the next. THE HUSTLE unreels as though it’s all been done before. And it has. This is a remake of DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (which was itself a remake of BEDTIME STORY) but it’s not in the same league as that 1988 Michael Caine and Steve Martin hit. THE HUSTLE starts out bad and stays there, never steadying itself even after the central caper plot starts to unfold. The screenplay (credited to five writers – never a good sign!) is lazy, as if they purposely left out the funny stuff. The physical comedy isn’t much better unless your idea of hilarity is seeing Rebel Wilson with her hand super-glued to a wall. A scene where she eats a French fry that has wiped in a toilet (she’s pretending to be blind – har har!) may the low point of 2019 cinema so far. Ms Wilson mugs shamelessly throughout, rolling her eyes, sticking out her tongue, and making faces like a spoiled child. Her antics seem designed to distract from this horrible screenplay, but it’s just embarrassing. Hathaway escapes with her dignity slightly more intact, modeling many gorgeous outfits through THE HUSTLE’S 93-minute running time. In every scene she’s sporting some elegant new garb (and I swear I spotted her clothing change within a scene) and looks stunning. She also tries on as many accents, but to far less effect. Charisma-challenged man-child Alex Sharp is hardly a formidable foe as the pair’s primary mark. Director Chris Addison, in his big-screen debut, never gets the timing right and allows the story to drag with little of the type of the rhythm, snap and internal logic a good caper needs. There are a couple of zingy lines (“if her tits were batteries, they’d go in a watch”) and a moment or two that suggests where Addison might have gone with tighter focus and a better script. We know the story takes place along the French Riviera because we’re told so and there are a handful of establishing shots, but most of the film takes place indoors in hotel rooms and casinos. The locale isn’t well-integrated and I never got the feeling the cast ever left a studio.

THE HUSTLE is a chick flick and I know I’m not its target audience. Women who go out and see it with their girlfriends or moms for Mother’s Day this weekend are less likely to have as miserable a time with it as I did.

1 of 5 Stars