Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

The Hustle

How the fuck did the "women aren't funny" fake controversy get started? From vaudeville sister acts to Lucille Ball to Joan Rivers to Aubrey Plaza, women have been tickling our funny boners since the first cave babe imitated her boyfriend trying to kill a woolly mammoth.

Anyone who says chicks can't be funny has never seen one try to parallel park. Or get ready to go out in less than an hour. Or shut the fuck up for five minutes while the game is on. I kid, I kid! Movies like the all-female Ghostbusters reboot or the gynocentric con artist comedy re-remake, The Hustle, aren't doing the XX set any favors, though. 

The Hustle is an updated, gender-bent Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which in turn was a remake of Bedtime Story. A high class, high end, big time con artiste, Josephine (Anne "Shakespeare's Wife" Hathaway), feels like she has to defend her turf from a no class, low end, small time con finger painter, Penny (Rebel "Rebel" Wilson). That's the first of the many cock-bogglingly dumb things this movie expects us to believe.

Even in a relatively small resort town, the idea that Penny's penny ante stakes scams would in any way mess with Josephine's WSOP Main Event level long cons is funnier than anything that actually happens in The Hustle. That includes the plus-sized load of fat jokes made at Ms. Wilson's expense.

In order to resolve this non-problem, the two grifters make a bet to see which one of them gets to be the Con Queen of the town and which has to leave it forever. The winner of the bet will be the woman who swindles a young, tech billionaire out of half a million bucks first. That is until, for absolutely no reason at fucking all, the bet changes to whoever can bang him first.

Without spoiling anything, the way The Hustle has Hathaway's character deal with the bet makes less sense than a halibut hacky sack. It's so idiotic that I literally almost bailed on the movie right then and there. Probably should have, too.

I'd say bitches be trippin', but this stankassery was written and directed by a total of eight dudes.

July 3, 2020