The Reel Review
Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson star in this gender flip of 1988’s charming conman comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, with Hathaway playing Michael Caine’s French Rivera sophisticate role and Wilson taking on Steve Martin’s part as the goofier, more low brow grifter.
To say this remake is unfunny is a massive understatement. It is EPICALLY and PROFOUNDLY UNFUNNY – a veritable black hole of unfunniness that swallows up every uncomfortably flat joke Anne Hathaway utters in her painfully bad accents. (And there are a lot of both.) This is particularly frustrating given how Oscar winner Hathaway (Les Miserables) hilariously stole the show in 2018’s Ocean’s 8. In this, she and Wilson have zero onscreen chemistry. Zilch.
The slapped together story lazily ticks the boxes of the original film’s plot in such a cursory way that it often feels rushed. At times it makes little sense to those unfamiliar with the original, and is annoying to those who are. And Tony award winner Alex Sharp (UFO, How to Talk to Girls at Parties) looks woefully out of place in the role that the late Glenne Headly did so very well. Its only bright spot is a cute score reminiscent of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. What an absolutely awful film – we’ve been conned.
REEL FACTS
• 2018 featured another gender-flipping comedy remake of a vastly-superior original – Overboard.
• Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is actually a remake of 1964’s Bedtime Story, which starred David Niven, Marlon Brando and Shirley Jones.
• Although set in the French Riviera, The Hustle was filmed in Majorca, Spain
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