Penny (Rebel Wilson) pursues a similar racket in less refined circumstances, and with less elegant methods. Her go-to grift is a modified version of catfishing, in which she confabulates a hot sister in desperate need of surgery. Her arrival in Beaumont is an irritant to Josephine, who objects to the competition and also to Penny’s exuberant vulgarity. Their frenemyship evolves through several stages. Josephine offers her services as mentor, hoping to polish Penny’s rough edges. Then they are competing to see who can fleece an American tech billionaire (Alex Sharp) who barely looks old enough to shave but is nonetheless ripe for the plucking. You will probably see the major plot twists coming, but you won’t necessarily enjoy what happens any less. Soignée swindlers in an opulent Mediterranean setting are pretty irresistible, and there’s something reassuring about a story that could have been told, with some variations of tone and topicality, at any point in the last hundred years or so. As with any classic recipe, what matters most is the execution. The financial stakes for Penny and Josephine and their marks may be high, but otherwise “The Hustle” gambles with play money, risking a bit of sentimentality or wounded feelings here, a snarl of meanspiritedness there. Nobody is going to get hurt, but Hathaway and Wilson make decent sport of it. The humor, as you might expect, relies on their physical and temperamental contrasts. Hathaway, affecting an upper-crusty accent as Josephine’s default voice (she has others when she needs them), savors her own chilliness and weaponizes her self-control. Wilson is, well, the opposite — anarchic, profane, warm and obnoxious, using her body like a throw pillow and her voice like a car alarm. Her deployment of the phrase “prima nocta” is a high point. There are others — goofy accents, nicely staged pratfalls, humiliations large and small — though not much that rises to the level of unforgettable, wild-eyed, laugh-out-loud hilarity. But as I said, comedy is in a weird place right now, and “The Hustle” deserves some credit for fulfilling its own modest, escapist ambitions. Unlike a lot of what we see these days, in movies and elsewhere, it doesn’t feel like a rip-off or a scam. It’s downright innocent.<doc-sep>Review: Go Into the Pleasantly Misandrist ‘The Hustle’ With No Knowledge of ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ and You’ll Have More Fun By Roxana Hadadi | Film | May 10, 2019 | Hats off to Anne Hathaway. In the past three years or so, the actress we used to revel in dunking on has made an increasingly interesting set of career choices, from the criminally underseen Colossal to her amusingly campy turn in Ocean’s 8 to the absolutely bonkers Serenity, which Kristy covered for us in great detail. And The Hustle is another stretching-her-skills turn for Hathaway, who switches between an impressive array of languages and an even flashier selection of pantsuits for her turn as a sophisticated and haughty con artist. Her self-serious, urbane air clashes nicely with Rebel Wilson’s gustily vulgar turn, and together the two of them make The Hustle pleasantly uncouth. These women belittle each other and scheme against one another and compete in a way that demonstrates their contrasting approaches to using men to get what they want. Because what they want is money, of course, and what they’ll do to get it is most anything that punishes men for their sexism and their shallowness and provides the women with enough to dress nicely and eat nicely and live nicely. Just a few hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars or whatever. The essentials! The Hustle is a remake of 1988’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, with Michael Caine in the Hathaway role and Steve Martin in the Wilson role, and that film from director Frank Oz, who would secure his cinematic legacy with 1991’s What About Bob?, was itself a remake. The original original was 1964’s Bedtime Story, with David Niven in the Caine and Hathaway role and Marlon Brando in the Martin and Wilson role, and you can see the pattern here—each of these previous films centered the narrative on male con artists. This time around, The Hustle focuses on Josephine Chesterfield (Hathaway) and Penny Rust (Wilson, who thankfully hasn’t said anything Extremely Wrong this press tour), who cross paths on a train to Beaumont-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, a town advertised as a “playground for the rich” in a magazine article Penny picks up while fleeing from police. That piece sent Penny packing for Europe, where she’s using a Taken-style sob story about her missing sister and her auctioned-off virginity to snag free meals (with three slices of cake!) and spending money from well-off “nice” guys. These wealthy men would never look at Penny twice but will gladly support her as she tries to save her hot, busty sister from evil bearded men on yachts (cough, Muslims, the movie means Muslims), and so Penny has no qualms taking their money. Witnessing one of these exchanges, Josephine realizes that the miniature empire she runs in Beaumont-sur-Mer—where she has a small crew of people who help execute her cons, including a local police detective (Ingrid Oliver, from Doctor Who)—is in jeopardy. The town isn’t big enough for two female hustlers, and so Josephine first tries to drive out Penny, and then to train her. The two have wildly different styles, and a wager is eventually made: The first woman who can get $500,000 out of a tech millionaire, Thomas (Alex Sharp), gets to stay in Beaumont-sur-Mer. What follows are increasingly elaborate and bizarre displays of the women one-upping each other and trying to reveal the other as a fraud while securing their own financial windfall. I haven’t seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels or Bedtime Story, and so I walked into The Hustle blind—and I would suggest that if you can stay away from spoilers, do so. The movie follows the plots of the other films so closely (which I now realize from some Wiki-ing) that I’m not sure how enjoyable it would be if you could guess every beat coming. And while the movie’s overall plot is, like so many heist movies, somewhat predictable, I appreciated the surprises I received from going in totally unaware of what was to come, from the various double-crosses to the introduction of certain characters that take the narrative in increasingly ludicrous directions. How women feel about these gender-swapped remakes, a la this film and last year’s Ocean’s 8, in which Hathaway also co-starred, certainly varies. They are unarguably derivative in that they fail to provide original stories for women and instead repackage narratives initially crafted for men, but to the credit of The Hustle, it’s at least written by a woman, Jac Schaeffer, who also helped pen Captain Marvel. Schaeffer’s script provides an enjoyable raunchiness to this redo that helps sell the women’s rivalry and their prevailing disdain toward men. We all know from Wilson’s previous roles, including February’s Isn’t It Romantic, that she can effectively walk the line between disgusting and hilarious, and she’s fully on here; I lost it when she disparagingly called a priceless fossil a “dinosaur clitoris,” or when she went tit for tat with Veep’s relentlessly misogynistic Timothy Simons after catfishing him. And both Wilson and Hathaway engage in self-aware physical humor that demonstrates their characters’ knowledge of how people view them, and how they can use that to their advantage. It’s in the way Hathaway tries to grind up on some guy while maintaining spiteful eye contact with Wilson, whose character is pretending to be blind at the time; it’s how Wilson’s choice of clothing allows her to blend into the background, even in an array of trash bags. Hathaway’s Josephine considers the term “a good man” to be an oxymoron; she feels no guilt over conning men who cheat on their wives or who think that immigrants shouldn’t be allowed into the United States or who have destroyed the environment. In contrast, Wilson’s Penny just wants to have a good time—she doesn’t want men to fall in love with her, which is Josephine’s M.O., but she wants to make them feel bad for not doing so. To the credit of Schaeffer’s script, the film doesn’t come down one way or another on judging either of these women, and director Chris Addison—who has directed more than a dozen episodes of Veep, another pop culture product in which characters derive vicious glee from insulting each other—does a solid job capturing these women’s differences without prioritizing one over the other. The entire premise of the film is that you’ll sympathize with these criminals, or at least understand what societal ills they think they’re personally rebelling against with their schemes, and there’s spunk to the story when the women don’t get along, when Josephine calls Penny a “moon-faced troll” and Penny fires back that Josephine is a “animatronic cocktease.” If your idea of feminism is that women don’t need to blindly support each other solely on the basis of gender, that they can be competitive and conniving and still each individually contribute in the war against men, and if you think the stank that Wilson puts on the word “tits” is like no one else in the business, then The Hustle will probably work for you. Take joy in how Hathaway’s tone finds that perfect medium between a sneer and a smile and how she can weaponize those Disney princess eyes into a glare or a tear. Be amazed at how zealously Wilson plays the part of a deranged Ophelia—forced to wear a chastity belt!—in a scam the women call the Lord of the Rings. The gender-swapped The Hustle may be born out of a lazy idea, but its misandrist energy carries it along nicely. ← Donald Trump Told the Visiting Red 'Socks' That Lincoln Lost the Civil War | The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly About John Singleton → Roxana Hadadi is a Senior Editor for Pajiba. You can follow her on Twitter. Image sources (in order of posting): Epk.tv/MGM, Epk.tv/MGM, Epk.tv/MGM<doc-sep>It was eventually reduced to PG-13, but not without a fight. “The Hustle” is rated PG-13. Like many movies before it, however, the Anne Hathaway/Rebel Wilson comedy initially received an R from the MPAA and had to petition to have that reduced. Speaking to Yahoo!, Wilson claimed that sexism contributed to the harsh rating — not least because “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” of which “The Hustle” is a female-fronted remake, was classified as PG. “I thought it was extremely unfair that a reboot of that was given an R-rating just because us two sexy ladies were in it,” the actress said. Steve Martin and Michael Caine starred in “Scoundrels,” which was released in 1988 — four years after the PG-13 rating was implemented. “I thought it was quite sexist that male-driven comedies were much more likely to get PG ratings…when, on a scientific analysis, female-driven comedies had less swear words, less nudity and less violence,” Wilson added. Hathaway, for her part, recalled experiences on earlier projects in which humorous lines were delivered one way on set and presented differently in the final film. “Sometimes I felt like the joke got cut off a little bit,” she said while acknowledging that her own performance may have been to blame. “It could have been that I wasn’t very funny! So I don’t necessarily want to claim gender inequality for that one. I just might not have stuck the landing.” “I don’t think there’s an intent to make the female characters less than,” Wilson said of working on studio comedies led by male stars. “It’s more just because those movies are typically written by guys and directed by guys, so you’re working at a disadvantage even from the script level when you come in as the chick in the film. It’s so cool to this movie where we’re both there everyday in these two comic set-pieces just bringing it.” “The Hustle” opens in wide release tomorrow. 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It’s the season of the hipster grifter (one of whom, Anna Sorokin, was sentenced to 12 years in prison Thursday) and a government obsessed with doing all the crimes itself, so you’d think it’s the perfect time for a goofy comedy about two savvy, sexy con women, right? Sure — but not if that movie is “The Hustle,” a would-be subversive, gender-swapped remake of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin, which is itself a remake of the 1964 film, “Bedtime Story,” which starred Marlon Brando and David Niven. “Scoundrels” remains absurd and wonderful (“Ruprecht, do you want the genital cuff?") and you should rent it instead of seeing “The Hustle.” Or, if you’re in the mood for killer femmes taking advantage of hapless dudes while decked out in haute couture, check out “Ocean’s 8,” which actually shows off Hathaway’s comedic chops in a way that riffs on her perfectly polished Hollywood image. What’s remarkable about both of these movies is that the cons themselves are silly, If not downright ludicrous, but the onscreen chemistry, writing and French Riviera glitz speeds along the narrative so quickly you don’t notice. The attitude of “Ocean’s 8” towards men isn’t much warmer than that of “The Hustle” — rarely are they given more than bit parts in the “Ocean’s” narrative, and the butchest character is played by Cate Blanchett in a dizzying array of fierce ensembles — but it’s much savvier and subtle. SIGN UP FOR THE THINK WEEKLY NEWSLETTER HERE In “The Hustle,” directed by Chris Addison, our two anti-heroes lack any particularly interesting characteristics that might give the viewer something to hold on to. Rebel Wilson co-stars as Lonnie/Penny, the scrappy, somewhat stupid corollary to Steve Martin’s Freddy/Ruprecht, and Anne Hathaway plays Josephine, a British ice queen who is the onscreen equivalent of Michael Caine’s character Lawrence. Where Freddy is sleazy, Lonnie is bumbling; where Freddy finagles freebies out of his marks, Lonnie mostly just confuses them or keeps talking until they give up. As the “low rent” half of the pair, Lonnie’s favorite activities are catfishing men on dating apps and then swindling them, eating messily and having sex. (Wow, a horny, hungry, plus-size female character — what a unique concept.) Lonnie’s main con is that when she meets up with a man she’s been catfishing and he’s inevitably disappointed that she’s not the outrageously buxom babe he’s been texting, she convinces him that the woman is her sister and she needs money for a breast augmentation. When she’s busted by police during a bar date with “Veep’s” Timothy Simons, the previous victim shouts, “That’s the fake tit job bitch!” (That this set-up is deeply unlikely to have worked in 2019 is never addressed.) Lonnie, at least, gets the most narrative development, such as it is; she reveals that she only robs the men she’s been catfishing if she meets them and they’re disappointed to get her instead of the babe in the photo... that she herself picked and sent them. Josephine is frigid and humorless but well-coiffed, and Hathaway occasionally flips on her Hollywood charm to lure in suitors with large diamond rings and other goodies. In one particular scene, she gives a glimpse of what “The Hustle” could have been, when she flips between various accents and languages in a meta-con. In what passes for “Odd Couple”-style banter, though, Josephine is subjected to fangless zingers from Lonnie, whose quips include that Josephine “looks like a librarian corpse but less lively.” Josephine and Lonnie’s tête-à-tête is equally humorless; the only thing on which they agree is that men are the perfect marks, because they don’t expect women to outsmart them, and women are “used to faking it,” as per Lonnie. Such is the gender humor in “The Hustle.” Where the grifters of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” lean into the soft-hearted ways of simple womenfolk, Lonnie and Josephine use sex and/or stupidity to manipulate modern Neanderthals. The sexism, like Martin’s physical gags, hasn’t aged well. Once they’re forced to work together, Lonnie takes on the Steve Martin role and plays Josephine’s sister; at one point, she dresses up like a medieval princess with very bad teeth who lives in a tricked-out cell in their home’s basement, along with her “court” full of mannequins.