Film Review: The Hustle

08:02 May 14, 2019
By: David Vicari

Josephine Chesterfield (Anne Hathaway) is a high-stakes con artist burning her way through rich men in the South of France. Her game is put into jeopardy, however, with the arrival of small-time grifter Penny Rust (Rebel Wilson). To get rid of the amateur, Josephine agrees to teach Penny all the tricks she knows.They decide that their target will be Thomas Westerburg (Alex Sharp), a young and bumbling software developer.


The Hustle is a gender-twisting remake of the hilarious Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), which, itself, is a remake of Bedtime Story (1964). Hathaway and Wilson are fun to watch, and the 93-minute movie is briskly paced, but it simply isn't all that funny. Maybe I've seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels too many times, because, to me, nothing here is as side-splitting as Steve Martin's scenes where he pretends to be the mentally deficient Ruprecht, or Michael Caine's cruel therapy treatments for Martin's character.

The Hustle is not exactly a scene-for-scene remake of Scoundrels, but it's close. So, that makes The Hustle extremely predictable for anyone who fondly remembers the 1988 film. Now, if you haven't seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, you may get enjoyment out of The Hustle.

** out of four

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