It was bad. Awful. It was so terrible I wanted to walk up to the screen and punch JLo in the face. Not since she almost ruined Ben Affleck’s career with “Gigli” did I see anything so bad I wanted to set myself on fire outside the theater in protest, and I would have if my friends didn’t stop me from lighting the match. I honestly can’t understand how this movie ever got made. I could just imagine someone trying to sell this to a producer: “How about we make a movie about a bunch of strippers who drug men and get rich off it? It will be a heart-warming, family friendly film teaching good values to all the young girls out there. Doesn’t every dad want their little girl to do pole dancing for a living?”
To be fair, I can’t say I followed the plot completely. I walked out of the theater and watched about 40 minutes of “It 2” before coming to see the end of “Hustlers.” But that doesn’t mean I didn’t see enough for a brief review. As George Bernard Shaw would say, you don’t have to eat the whole egg to know it’s rotten. I also have a hard time believing that this is based on a true story, because I have trouble imagining anyone in real life being so extraordinarily unpleasant as the characters played in this film. A part of me wanted to see them die in a fire or all get eaten by sharks and somehow redeem the movie, but alas, no such luck. In fact, to distract myself as my personality fractured to escape the horror of being stuck inside a shitty movie, I fantasized of the many different brutal deaths that could bring charm and color to the film.
A character rundown: Jennifer Lopez plays Ramona, a stupid ho that is the den mother to aspiring stupid hos like Destiny (Constance Wu). They decide to “turn the tables” on Wall Street clients that frequent the club to see them dance. They lace their drinks with rohypnol and steal their money. They become filthy rich stupid hos. Then they get caught and lose it all to become broke stupid hos.
Wow. What a powerful and engaging true story, worthy of the likes of epics from “Lincoln” to “Castaway.” How did they ever find such an inspiring lot as the greedy and insipid strippers this film is based on? Oh pray tell! How long did the writer scour the annals of history to find such a pinnacle of achievement, character and honor that is “Hustlers”? Oh, wait, that’s right, it was based on a magazine article!
Honestly, if I wanted fake tits shoved in my face for two hours, I’d rub it against a mannequin and save myself some money.
This is definitely a chick flick, because the only people I know who wanted to see it were women, and they were disappointed, which pleased me to no end since they had dragged me to this. Speaking of which, what is it about JLo’s acting that turns any theater into a Planned Parenthood of cinematic abortions?
I always thought strippers were kind of boring because there’s no joy in watching a woman undress if she isn’t going to have sex with you. The only tolerable character was Elizabeth (Julia Stiles), and that’s because she kept her clothes on. I missed when Elizabeth wasn’t on the screen, because I knew the next scene was more of Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu, which was pure agony.
The 2 dimensional miscreants in this shart of a film seemed a case study in how to make your audience detest the protagonists and root for the bad guys. Every time bad things happened to them I giggled. Every time good things happened to them I cursed. Every attempt at humor was pathos and every attempt at pathos was funny.
In fact, at the end of the film Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) imparts the basic message of the film when she says “we are all hustlers.” She says it like it is some deep hidden wisdom, or a teaching worthy of Socrates, Diogenes, or even Dear Abby, but I think she’s projecting a bit of herself on to everyone else, because that is clearly not the the case. Most people are not hustlers. Look around you.
That said, I give this movie zero out of five stars, and I am being generous, because I wanted to say minus 5 stars but I wasn’t exactly traumatized by the experience.
Then again, maybe I was.