‘The Hustle’ (2019) Review

This review contains spoilers for The Hustle.

So I saw a movie with my mom today. I saw it with her because I’m a good son and it’s Mother’s Day. The Hustle is a comedy that stars Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson as con artists who con men out of money. The reason they do it is basically because men are assholes so they’re turing the tables on them.

I mean, fair enough.

At one point, they make a bet to see who cons this one guy out of $500,000 (all that Rebel Wilson has) first. The winner gets to have the turf in France where all the rich people are or something.

Anyways, the guy is a fucking nerd who made a successful app. He looks like Mark Zuckerberg but more human. So like Rebel Wilson is pretending to be blind and Anne Hathaway is pretending to be her doctor who has a cartoonish German accent.

But then Zuckerberg Junior falls in love with Rebel Wilson and she’s falling for him back. That’s when Anne Hathaway changes the bet to being whoever bones him first wins. The scene where Hathaway tries to seduce him has a good visual gag where his hotel room says “Suite Caroline.”

That’s the funniest joke in the movie.

So yeah the nerd has an emotional goodbye with Wilson. Hathaway shows up at their Casablanca-ass-farewell-at-a-plane and reveals that he conned her out of $500,000 and also accepted $500,000 out of Wilson. He texts Wilson and reveals that, while he wasn’t lying about loving her, he was playing a long con and is the grandson of legendary con artist MEDUSA.

Woaaaah what a twiiiiiist.

That’s craaaaaazy.

Then like he shows up at Hathaway’s house with a bunch of people and improv’s them into his latest con. He asks them to join him and they become a con artist trio. After this natural end there’s another ending 6 months later where they’re outrunning someone and get away. Unnecessary.

So the movie’s not great, but I wanted to talk about it’s weird relationship with gender and stuff. It starts off kind of male centric, but at the very least it’s kind of discussing the relationship between men and women in society. It’s not like great feminist theory, but I’ve seen worse. Then the movie forgets all about that and becomes about two women fighting over a guy. A mediocre white guy. Then it ends with the mediocre white beating them at their own game. Where’d all that bare bones basic feminist theory stuff go? Poof! Gone.

This movie was directed by a man and 3 of the 4 credited screenwriters are men. Makes sense.

Happy Mother’s Day everyone.