THE HUSTLE: Gender-Swapped Remake Is A Fruitless Con

It’s like every other comedy being released today is a remake, frequently followed by the trend that involves gender-swapping the lead roles, once tailored to men. It’s a fresh take, meant to elicit a contemporary (and usually feminine) perspective to a familiar screenplay, but it doesn’t always work out. Remakes/spinoffs like 2018’s Overboard and Ocean’s 8, were unable to justify their existence convincingly.

Essentially, their entire existence is scathed by the most crucial elements that make a valid comedy remake: the dialogue lacked vim, the story wasn’t distinctly or innovatively tinkered with, the comedy felt dry and the gratification of arriving at the conclusion — whether that be divulging the heist in Ocean’s 8, or realizing the rapacious man finding out he loved the impecunious woman all along in Overboard — is already gone, due to a tidal wave of insipidity.

The trend only continues in 2019 with movies like What Men Want and Little, which aren’t appalling films per se, but I think it’s time to reevaluate what makes a remake, reboot or spinoff necessary — I’m speaking in terms of cinematic value, not monetary value, of course. When done correctly and purposefully, the gender-swapping mechanics can lessen the banality and strengthen an appealing and most likely feminine voice that resonates a lot with the progression of comedy, and cinema in general.

Representation is vital, but so is maintaining the artistic fuel in cinema: whatever genre the director is tackling, there must be components that vividly and thoroughly act as attestation for the film’s position in whatever genre or category it’s trying to seek comfort in.

The Hustle

Director Chris Addison neglects that certain comedic drive and instead squanders the blistering talent of Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson in The Hustle, a gender-switched remake of the 1988 slapstick comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels — which is also a remake of the 1964 film Bedtime Story; it’s madness I tell you.

The Hustle is the equivalent of a con job, a specious layout, originally deposited to gull viewers into thinking this remake could potentially be an endearing, female-centric comedy about a hard-edged con artist meeting a madcap con artist — ultimately advancing a kooky partnership, once rooted in rancor, gradually growing into friendship. Unfortunately, even in such familiar storytelling grounds (how many times have we’ve seen this type of incompatible partnership before?), Jac Schaeffer’s script entitles Hathaway and Wilson with fiddling dialogue and plagued personalities.

Penny Rust (played by Rebel Wilson) is an empty-headed and brash Australian con artist, purloining cash from dirty rotten men in musky bars, while Josephine Chesterfield (played by Anne Hathaway) is a crafty, pawky and couth British con artist with a ritzy home in Beaumont-sur-Mer, and inheriting a nonchalant and hegemonic attitude. Penny is a swindler using her circumstances as a way to beguile credulous men, usually going with the flow and seeing where the con guides her. But Josephine probes her subjects, dissecting their susceptibility and chasing their loot in a pertinacious manner: stroking and upholding the man’s fragile ego to rigorously dupe the man into giving her glossy diamonds.

Josephine is a master of seduction, while Penny is a master of being her vociferous and knowingly obnoxious self — and using her putrid essence to inveigle men of her “hardships.” These two swindlers were never meant to clash, but a potential money magnet brings them together — or apart, as a rivalry is set in place. Young app developer/so-called billionaire Thomas Westerburg (Alex Sharp) is the target in the grubby game between Penny and Josephine, who are trying to prove to one another who’s the superior con artist. Whoever steals $500k from Thomas, claims the territory of Beaumont-sur-Mer. Things get complicated as romance, friendship and duplicity affect every character, and nobody is able to predict the outcome.

Bland Characters

A good con takes dexterity and stealth, a propensity to allure and misguide the target into doing whatever the swindler craves, and The Hustle is one whopping failure that ended up robbing my time in a rather uninspired and conspicuously elementary fashion. Hathaway immerses herself in a series of voguish and glitzy dresses, embodying the character’s appetite for a plush lifestyle and utilizing her outer mien as a tool to seduce men, but looking the part isn’t the same as playing the part. A fake accent and flimsy characterization, Hathaway stumbles to persuade viewers of her character’s vulpine and urbane facet, chiefly because the script is unfolding this illicit, con artist endeavor, that holds very little stamina. Defrauding (or manipulating) a man through seduction is something out of every spy/heist movie, but with The Hustle being a comedy and all, shouldn’t the seduction be comical? Shouldn’t the dialogue be funny? In this case, the mirth isn’t earned.

Wilson radiates the atmosphere with her recklessness and impropriety, but even a spirited Wilson isn’t able to escape the nondescript execution — which reduces her character to a beacon for chaos, without warranting the majority of it beforehand. And when it comes to developing the friendship between Penny and Josephine, there isn’t a moment that really highlights their newly evolved empathy and realization that they’ve done wrong.

The relationship dynamics of Penny and Josephine sway back-and-forth like a ship in the heart of a blustery storm; you never really palpably feel when they’re friends or competitors in distress. Their reactions are geared by whatever helps fuel the daft and ill-conceived situation either of them encounter, revealing a snippet of instability that disrupts the coherency of the plot and depiction of the characters. The heist is not diverting, it’s distracting and harebrained because the filmmakers trivialize the entire con(s). So how can the two leading roles possibly make it work? They don’t.

A Con Job Gone South

Hathaway and Wilson are fine actors, capable of much more. But the humor never feels authentic and the emotional stakes are somewhere embedded in the rather fixed direction, following similar beats of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but still neglecting to unlock the full potential of the two actresses. The carny characters may be skillfully calculating the con of Thomas Westerburg in their own (and often nutty) ways, but the con(s) lacks intrigue and pleasure in the process of defrauding unsuspecting men. Although, there’s obviously a point during the film where the pleasure of the con job plunges the con artists to weather regret and reflection; but here, the characters’ introspection is desultory, while the blossoming romance between two characters is a fleeting element that’s feeble and laughably crooked.

The type of comedy embraced here is raunchy and very physical (at one point, Penny has to replicate a blind person, while Josephine has to alternate between accents), and although risqué comedies have their place in the genre, this is far too hasty and duplicitous to laud. The production and costume design remains tempting, but when it comes down to how the characters react to the crime and to the unexpecting feelings they tend to confront, all of it is treated partially and posthaste.

Scarcely reaching 90 minutes, by the time the con job concludes and a fruitless twist is unveiled, Addison was either pressured to keep things simple and brisk, or he just didn’t know how to conquer that pith of sly ambition usually expected from a heist/con-oriented picture; I never said “wow”, I never genuinely chuckled, and I never sensed a self-awareness to any of it, just obtrusive and delusive entertainment that fails to enchant me with stylish depravity.

The Hustle: Prepare to Get Hustled

This is a comedy without a soul, which also just happens to be a comedy without prompting any genuine laughs. The Hustle is a female-driven remake that features two household names together, and they tried to make it work: Hathaway attempted to showcase her character’s stinging perspicacity in an enticing fashion; Wilson aimed to exude her character’s physical hilarity in a resolute scheme — which involves a lot of falling, tasting and intentional confusion.

Unfortunately, Addison isn’t able to divert this comedy remake in any innovative approach, and it comes across as a quick money-maker, essentially undervaluing the on-screen talent and orchestrating a half-done con. It may look appealing, but don’t let The Hustle deceive you. It’s a con job in itself.

What did you think of The Hustle? Let us know in the comments below!

The Hustle was released in the US and the UK on May 10, 2019. For all international release dates, see here.