The Hustle: Film Review

The Hustle: Film Review

Cast: Rebel Wilson, Anne Hathaway, Alex Sharp
Director: Chris Addison

Remaking Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with female leads isn't a bad idea, it's just that The Hustle doesn't really do much with its central conceit.

Meshing both the original through a prism of The Taming of The Shrew with This Means War mentalities and throwing in Rebel Wilson's freewheeling ways and Anne Hathaway's uptight English accent doesn't quite deliver the requisite goods, even if it does proffer a few belly laughs.

With their odd couple vibe (Wilson plays a low rent hustler, Hathaway a more society-obsessed scammer), the duo forge a bet against each other after Hathaway's Josephine's offended by the arrival of Wilson's Penny in her patch. Landing on a scam that's a winner takes all, the battle lines are drawn...

To be fair, the banter between Josephine and Penny makes part of the film worthwhile. From decrying Hathaway's Josephine to a "librarian's corpse, but less lively" to referring to Wilson as a "big titted Russell Crowe", there are some moments that really land in this continually flat and formulaic mess.

But they're outweighed by Wilson once again debasing herself in weight gags and the fact nobody can love her (relatively fresh in Pitch Perfect, but starting to depressingly stink in 2019) and a script that's nonsensical and keen to drop storylines for the hell of it, despite giving them weighting early on.

Hathaway's game for comedy proves fruitful once again, with a deft light touch benefiting proceedings.

While The Hustle doesn't outstay its welcome at a relatively tight 90 minutes, it can be summed up in one interaction between Wilson's Penny, who's pretending to be blind, and Sharp's benevolent tech guy who befriends her, unaware he's her mark.

"You've got hysterical blindness," he says; to which she remarks quickly "It's not that funny to me."

So say we all, Rebel Wilson, so say we all.