You know a remake is bad when it tempts you to doubt the merits of the original. Redoing the con-artist caper Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) with female leads is a good idea, and casting Anne Hathaway as the snob and Rebel Wilson as the slob sounds like an even better one. Yet somehow The Hustle, directed by Chris Addison ("Veep"), is loud and leaden when it should sparkle like Champagne. Dim-witted rich dudes are plentiful in the movie's French Riviera setting, but laughs are not. The Hustle follows the plot of the beloved Michael Caine-Steve Martin comedy so closely that only two of its credited screenwriters (Dale Launer and Jac Schaeffer) are still among the living. The other two, Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning, penned both Scoundrels and the 1964 film of which it was itself a remake. In this version, Wilson plays Penny, a trashy-dressing trash talker who specializes in online catfishing. On a jaunt to the Riviera, she runs into Josephine (Hathaway), a refined sort who excels at bilking men with more money than morals. Initially, the two team up, and Josephine tutors Penny in the ways of high society. The alliance is short-lived, though, and soon they're competing for the fortune and affections of a tech millionaire (Alex Sharp) who looks barely out of high school. The reinterpretation of Glenne Headly's spacey heiress as a socially inept tech bro is one of the remake's more interesting choices. While Martin's and Caine's characters played on women's loneliness, these two play on men's vanity, with Josephine breezily informing Penny that the secret of her success is men's refusal to believe women can outsmart them. The problem is that most of the cons in The Hustle are played so broadly it's impossible to imagine anyone being outsmarted for a second. Scoundrels had its silly moments, but Caine's straight-man hauteur and Martin's skilled use of deadpan kept things from getting consistently cartoonish. Not so here. Both leads have proven comedy chops: Wilson carried the recent Isn't It Romantic on the force of her bemused eyebrows alone, while Hathaway's insecure starlet was one of the funniest parts of Ocean's 8. Here, though, they play so much to type they become caricatures. Penny is portrayed as a surly slacker of a scammer — one can only assume she does her best work online — while Josephine swans around with a succession of ever more absurdly fake accents to match her designer outfits. Rarely does either seem halfway competent at her profession. The whole production shares that manic, more-is-more approach. Like its predecessor, The Hustle has a lengthy con-artist-training montage. But where Caine trained Martin in golfing, suit wearing and wine tasting, Hathaway trains Wilson in knife throwing and other stuff more suited to a spy movie. The tone levels out a bit once Sharp's character enters the picture, but it's too little, too late. Nothing's inherently wrong with broad slapstick, of course. But a celebration of the art of the con, which involves reading and playing on people's vulnerabilities, demands a subtler touch — and, to put it bluntly, a smarter script. If The Hustle had leaned into its own feminist rhetoric and really shown us how the two leads wormed their way into men's bank accounts via lust and ego, it might have been delicious fun. Instead, Hathaway and Wilson are so busy playing to the audience that they barely even bother with their marks. That's the real con.<doc-sep>Chris Addison and Jac Schaeffer’s female-centered remake of the 1988 film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, titled The Hustle, is out tomorrow, and the reviews have started to trickle in. It’s mostly a mixed bag. Anne Hathaway plays Josephine, an elegant con woman who is a sophisticated honey trap, and Rebel Wilson as Penny, the “low-brow” con woman who Josephine attempts to mold into an ally. As mentioned, it’s a remake of the 80s movie Dirty Rotton Scoundrels, which is a remake of the 1964 film Bedtime Story. Going through the reviews, it seems like The Hustle is a mixed bag, with good performances by the main women, and beautiful costuming being done, but critics seem to range the movie from weak to mediocre. Variety: “[…] while “The Hustle” maintains a tone of confectionary amorality, instead of building toward its logical climax — the ultimate con pulled on male piggishness — it begins to play like “Ocean’s Two” with a soft-focus target.” The AV Club: “[…] it doesn’t really have all that much to say. Not about gender, not about con artistry, and definitely not about how to craft a satisfying studio comedy. […] Despite its glitz and glam, The Hustle is mostly bland and familiar, even if you’ve never seen its predecessor. A good con movie should feel clever in the moment and even more satisfying once all the puzzles pieces snap into place. The Hustle settles for being generally amiable instead, content to offer some chuckles here and there but little in the way of laugh-out-loud comedy or satisfying surprises.” The New York Times: “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 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.” Most of the reviews, in their longer format, make mention in some way of other “female-led” reboots or remakes of male-featured franchises like Oceans 8 or Ghostbusters. Fundamentally, I have no problem with these gender-swapped movies, and I think in the hands of good writers and actors, there is a place to highlight what having female voices can add to the project. Yet it sounds like this movie only served to switch out a traditional set of dude tropes, with a set of lady tropes, and neither really adds anything. IndieWire: “Chris Addison’s flimsy “The Hustle” attempts to jazz up an old-fashioned premise with a contemporary twist: what if said scoundrels were actually women? The gender-swapping conceit may be a transparent bid for modern relevance, but it’s one of the few things that actually works about the chintzy comedy.” The Wrap: “‘The Hustle” pits the two women against each other and turns conning men into a competitive sport. […] There’s no camaraderie that ensues between Penny and Josephine or a sense that they’re even contending with the same issues. In fact, the class difference between the two women is often used as a tired punchline. Penny is the clumsy one with the tacky clothes who doesn’t know how to walk in heels, while Josephine is the polished ballgown diva who uses her statuesque figure to claim authority over both her male victims and Penny. […] How many times do we need to see the fat woman be the punchline — and how much longer will Wilson endure this characterization?” Slash Film: “Fat jokes and gay digs run amok in a film that is barely saved by the sparkling chemistry of its duo, Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson, who do their best with a film that scams you out of your time. […] The Hustle is a muddled and regressive comedy that is not for want of laughs. But it’s for want of any meaning that makes it more than a forgettable comedy that watch on Netflix before instantly pushing it out of your mind. Hathaway and Wilson try their best to salvage the film, but in the end, it feels like a long con.” Screen Rant: “As a whole, The Hustle has something of a TV film look to it (in a bad way, that is), complete with clunky green screen backdrops and overall flat visuals. And save for a montage where Josephine trains Penny in the art of being a master con artist, the film doesn’t have much success when it comes to finding inventive ways of staging its comedy-driven set pieces and sequences, either.” I’m interested in seeing The Hustle, if anything to see if Rebel Wilson will go as far as Steve Martin in some of the scenes. I want to root for these movies because sometimes male fans (and women as well) can be too precious about these kinds of swaps, but I’m also tired of seeing mostly white faces be elevated to the forefront. I also don’t want these typical “fat girl” messy tropes anymore in the same way. I thought Spy proved that was all bullshit. Can we just get a sequel to Spy, please? (image: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site! —The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.— Have a tip we should know? [email protected]<doc-sep>☆☆☆☆☆ The grossly cynical Hollywood craze for distaff remakes (Ghostbusters, Ocean’s 8, What Men Want) reaches an excruciating nadir with this gender-flipped take on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. While women film-makers continue to struggle for parity in commercial cinema (directing only 8 per cent of the top 250 films of last year), the gender-switched rehash has been mainstream Hollywood’s answer to the demands of the Time’s Up movement. These films are unanimously directed by men and feature glamorous female stars parachuted into the central roles, vacated by men. Nothing else changes. They are simply a marketing exercise and a chance to cash in (same film, new poster) on a popular movement. And although distinctive female voices are slowly redressing the balance<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.<doc-sep>
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.