FILM OF THE WEEK
The Hustle
Cert: 15A; Now showing The official synopsis and trailer for this comedy pitches it as a tale of two female scam artists “who team up to take down the dirty rotten men who have wronged them”.
Well isn’t that great — a sassy reboot of 1988 classic Dirty Rotten Scoundrels that has the added bonus of seeing two female protagonists stick a boot in to lousy blokedom on behalf of the sisterhood.
Only this is not what happens in The Hustle.
Perhaps the marketing team decided that pandering to the feminist dollar might bring a bit of identity or zeitgeist relevance to Chris Addison’s near-facsimile.
In truth, the template established by the original — penned all those years ago by Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning and Dale Launer — does most of the heavy lifting, with screenwriter Jac Schaeffer reconfiguring things for a female-led adaptation.
Anne Hathaway goes hyper-plummy as Josephine, a scam artist preying on lonely loaded types whom she cosies up to at her local Riviera casino. Josephine’s turf is under threat, however, when Penny (Rebel Wilson) rocks up looking to bring her unique brand of con-artistry to the wealthy strangers holidaying in the area. When they spot Alex Sharp’s callow tech billionaire, a gentlewoman’s bet is agreed upon whereby whoever seduces half a million out of him gets to stay. Make no mistake — this is war.
Hathaway and Wilson (who has a production credit here) put their backs into it, but outside the rich source material, they bring only one new joke to the table, and not a very lasting one at that — Penny’s belly-flopping Aussie crudeness clashing with Josephine’s prim glamour.
When that gag’s been exhausted (the end of Act 1, pretty much), there are one or two worthwhile scenes of women-behaving-badly rivalry where the ingredients combine to good effect. Sadly, the overall effect is to make you hanker for the original. That film, you may recall, didn’t need any cynical political angles airbrushed on after the fact.