3 / 10
Official trailer
The Hustle is the gender-flipped remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988).
That was itself a remake of Bedtime Story (1964). Chris Addison directed. Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning, Dale Launer, and Jac Schaeffer wrote across the adaptations. Anne Hathaway plays Josephine Chesterfield, a sophisticated con artist on the French Riviera. Rebel Wilson plays Penny Rust, an Australian con artist who arrives on the same coast. The two compete to defraud a young tech millionaire played by Alex Sharp.
The plot is structurally identical to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with the genders reversed. Steve Martin and Michael Caine played the original roles. Glenne Headly played the mark. The Hustle disappoints more than a plain bad movie would, because the ingredients are right there. Hathaway and Wilson are funny people, the Scoundrels template is close to foolproof, and the film still finds a way to fumble it. Every scene makes me miss Caine and Martin.
The film made approximately ninety-six million dollars worldwide on a twenty-one million dollar budget.
The commercial performance was modest. The reviews were largely negative. The film is one of the clearer recent examples of a gender-flip remake that didn’t produce different material than the original. The structural beats are the same. The script’s added moral framing about feminism in confidence work positions the film as a feminist statement about the property without doing the comedic work that would make the statement land.
What Made It a Woke Disaster
The film’s central addition is that the marks, men in this version, deserve to be conned. The 1988 original treated its mark sympathetically and set up the third-act reveal that she had been conning both protagonists. The 2019 version codes its male victims as deserving targets because they’re men with money who patronize women. The film stages Josephine’s con on the British baron with explicit moralizing. The baron hasn’t done anything wrong. He has money and he likes Josephine, and the script treats that as a crime. That’s absurd.
In the film’s eyes, both facts are sufficient justification for the con. The script’s argument is that the wealth-and-condescension combination makes a male target morally fair game.
The David Stark mark, played by Alex Sharp, is the film’s clearest ideological choice. Stark is positioned as a wealthy tech entrepreneur who turns out to have built his fortune through an app he stole from a friend. The reveal makes Stark a deserving victim. The 1988 original’s mark was an heiress who had nothing to apologize for except being wealthy. The script’s choice to make the 2019 mark deserving of his fraud is the film’s argument that taking money from this kind of man is itself moral action.
The con is no longer transgressive entertainment. The con is corrective justice.
Wilson plays Penny Rust, a broad comic role the film positions as the unrefined feminist working-class voice against Hathaway’s polished aristocratic con. Penny’s argument throughout the film is that the system has rigged the game against women and her cons are the only way to redistribute resources. The script delivers the argument through comedic dialogue but treats the argument as substantively correct. It frames Penny’s wins as deserved and her losses as the system fighting back.
The lecturing loses me for good. Con comedy runs on the fun of watching charming crooks get away with something, and a film that keeps stopping to tell me the crooks are the good guys has sucked all the fun out of the room.
For Writers
A con artist film whose moral structure makes the cons feel justified loses the transgressive energy that makes con artist films work. The Hustle codes its victims as deserving so the audience can root for the con. The 1988 original trusted the audience to enjoy watching skilled rogues without needing moral cover. The lesson is that some genres require moral ambiguity. Con artist comedy depends on the audience enjoying behavior that would be wrong if they thought about it carefully.
Add the moral cover and you’ve removed the genre’s engine. The audience doesn’t need permission to root for charming rogues.
The Caine-Martin Problem
Steve Martin and Michael Caine had specific complementary energies in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Caine played Lawrence Jamieson as the sophisticated long-running con artist whose European refinement was the entire engine of the performance. Martin played Freddy Benson as the crude American small-time hustler whose lack of refinement was the contrast. The two performers had different career backgrounds, different comedic traditions, and different specific instruments. The film worked because the contrast between them produced material neither could have generated alone.
Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson have different career backgrounds and different comedic traditions. The script positions Hathaway as the sophisticated con and Wilson as the crude one. The structural template is preserved. The chemistry isn’t. Hathaway and Wilson are professional and competent. They don’t have the same kind of complementary contrast that Caine and Martin had. The film can’t generate the same energy because the lead pairing can’t produce the same dynamic.
Watching Hathaway and Wilson try to spark off each other is the most frustrating part for me. They’re both working hard, and the timing never clicks. Half their scenes play like two solo acts sharing a stage.
For Writers
A remake can’t replicate its central performance dynamic by casting different performers in structurally similar roles. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels worked because of Caine and Martin’s complementary energies. The Hustle doesn’t work as well because Hathaway and Wilson are professional but don’t have the same chemistry. The lesson is that performance chemistry isn’t interchangeable. Particular performers produce particular dynamics. Replicating a structural template without the original chemistry usually produces work that lacks the original’s energy.
The Hathaway Performance
Anne Hathaway commits to the sophisticated con artist role with serious craft. The European-accent work, the refined physical comedy, and the staged seduction sequences are all technically accomplished. Hathaway is among the most disciplined comedic performers of her generation when given the right material. The Josephine role gives her workable material in spots. The script doesn’t consistently support her work.
The accent work is one of the film’s more distinctive elements. Hathaway has done this kind of accent work in other films (The Devil Wears Prada, The Princess Diaries franchise) and brings the same craft here. The work would be more effective in a film that supported it better. Surrounded by stronger material, Hathaway’s specific commitment would land more clearly. The Hustle doesn’t provide that material.
Hathaway is the one person I’d rescue from this movie. That accent is a hoot, and she’s clearly having more fun than the script deserves.
For Writers
A lead performance that exceeds the surrounding material produces an uneven film. Anne Hathaway is doing more careful craft work than The Hustle requires. The contrast between her commitment and the film’s overall execution is visible. The lesson is that overall quality outweighs any individual element. A film with one strong performance and weak surrounding material reads as weak overall. Distribute the craft attention across the production.
Craft Note
The Lord of the Rings con sequence is the film’s most singular individual passage and a direct lift from the 1988 original’s “Ruprecht the Monkey Boy” routine. Wilson plays the role with full physical commitment. The sequence works in isolation because the original material works and Wilson doesn’t undermine it. The passage shows that the script knew where the 1988 film’s strongest beats were and reproduced them faithfully. The reproduction also exposes why the rest of the film doesn’t work.
The Lord of the Rings sequence is the 2019 film’s best moment because it’s the most direct reproduction of the 1988 film’s best moment. The rest of the film, where the script tries to add its own material, doesn’t match.
Should you skip The Hustle?
3/10. This remake takes a con comedy that ran on pure mischief and smothers it in a lecture, and I have a hard time forgiving that. Hathaway’s accent work and the Lord of the Rings sequence are the only stretches where I’m enjoying myself, and the second one only works because it’s lifted almost straight from the 1988 film. The Hathaway-Wilson pairing never catches fire. Watch Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) instead and let this one go.
