The Hustle

Remakes. The cinematic landscape of 2019 is riddled with them. Recently we've had Pet Semetary, Hellboy, Cold Pursuit & Dumbo. Coming soon we have Aladdin, The Lion King and a new Godzilla film. Of the ones released so far one thing they all have in common is they are lesser movies than the originals. It's the nature of the beast. Remakes are cynical cash grabbing exercises that rarely if ever add anything new to proceedings. It seems to just be easier to take what's already there, polish it up, throw in a couple of popular actors and watch the cash roll in. The latest film to do this is the Hustle, a remake of the 1987 comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Does it live up to the Steve Martin/Michael Caine classic? Could it be the film to break the mould? No.

Penny Rust (Rebel Wilson) is a con artist on the run from the States after her latest scam hit the wall. She finds herself in the French Riveria where her latest attempt to nab some cash is overheard by a rather more refined trickster called Josephine Chesterfield. Josephine uses her police connections to try to get Penny booted out of town to stop her zoning in on Josephine's marks but they eventually end up working together to make a mint. Will their clashing styles and personalities work?

If you've seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrel's you've seen this. It's the same movie with the gender balance flipped. Two female con artists, one crude and one dashing, working together and bouncing off each other, torturing each other and competing against one another to take down a male rube. Every beat of Scoundrels (which itself was a remake of 1964's Bedtime Story) is replayed with less charm and less humour, right down to the now reprehensible mining of humour from psychological and physical disabilities. What might have came off as funny in a film of the 80's now feels cringeworthy and cheap.

It's annoying because it could have been great fun. Watching rich yanks being parted from their cash is something that never gets old. Rebel Wilson is an immensely talented comedian with a gift for the pratfall and someone who isn't afraid to make a muppet of herself. But here she's dealt a shitty hand with a script that takes nonstop mean spirited & cheap potshots at her looks and her weight. She deserves better than that. Anne Hathaway, who stole the show in Ocean's Eight does slightly better in a posh, notions filled role but her character Josephine is a paper thin one, noticeably more than Penny. It feels like there should be more of her there but it was snipped away to give the film a cinema friendly 90 minute running time. Between the writing and the short shrift given it's hard to give a damn about either Penny or Josephine and for a comedy to work you have to empathise with the characters onscreen.

There's a couple of laughs in here but they're few and far between. A training montage to get Penny prepared for her interactions with the elite of Beaumont-sur-Mer will make you giggle in a couple of places. Also the very unsavoury techniques (shotguns & rapidly closed doors) used by Josephine when she's in full on con mode will make you smile but that's about it. A handful of fun in an hour and a half does not a good comedy make. The switching of genders adds nothing either. There was room here for some sly & pointed nods at the different ways society judges men and women for doing the same thing but it's a wasted opportunity instead. Blah.

Don't bother with this. You'll miss nothing. Catch it on netflix when it turns up. The small screen might be more forgiving to it's shortcomings.