Review: Hustlers

A stripper named Destiny (Constance Wu) is interviewed by an investigative journalist (the perennially underused Julia Stiles) about the events that led to her and her fellow strippers drugging and stealing money from wealthy clients. Jennifer Lopez plays veteran stripper Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), who takes Destiny under her wings. Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, and Cardi B play other strippers.

 

Supposedly based on true events outlined in a magazine article by Jessica Pressler, this 2019 film from writer-director Lorene Scafaria likely wasn’t aimed at me, but I’m gonna go ahead and state my opinion about it nonetheless. It was on TV, I had nothing better to do at the time, so I watched it and hoped for the best. “Showgirls” crossed with “Goodfellas” made by women, with a female gaze. In theory that might sound clever and worthy of telling. The execution however, is horribly botched with this extremely unconvincing, poorly scripted wannabe. Feminism, the female gaze, and #MeToo are all very worthy but do not themselves a good film maketh. And this is absolutely no good film.

 

The biggest problem is that it has been appallingly written and directed by Scafaria, who leaves her actresses completely out to sea. It’s horridly choppy and awkward storytelling, jumping in time far too often. Scafaria does a particularly awful job of introducing the audience to these people and their world. It’s like we’re not meant to give a crap about anyone who isn’t played by Constance Wu or J-Lo. Oh, and Usher. Apparently a cameo by Usher is supposed to impress me like it’s 1998 or something (the film is set between about 2007 and 2014 I think). In all seriousness, characters keep talking like so much time has passed and strong bonds have been formed during that time, but I never got a sense of those bonds. Meanwhile, it’s only after about 40 minutes that any of the strippers actually do some hustling…y’know, the thing that the film’s title talks about. 40 minutes into a 100 minute film and after several long time jumps the plot finally kicks in? Jesus.

 

Unfortunately, once the plot does kick in another big problem emerges. I get the feeling that I was to some extent supposed to be on these women’s side and that the film was meant to be seen as somewhat light-hearted. I guess I was meant to laugh as they schmooze, drug, and rob men. Horrible, sleazy men in most cases to be sure. But hello…Bill Cosby, anyone? I won’t call it double standards because I’m not an ‘incel’ moron (Cosby’s victims were all innocent people, these guys are predominantly creeps), and I understand the long-standing imbalance in power and position of the genders. But it still felt icky to have drugging be a part of this and simply switching the genders doesn’t make quite enough of a difference for me to forget how wrong it is and to somehow find it funny or even righteous. No. Nope. It’s wrong no matter what. I don’t care that it’s based on a true story. Even if these women had been exploited, underpaid or whatever it’s still completely wrong and completely wrong of Scafaria to treat it like it’s some kind of lark. Women victimising men – yay, girl power! Nope. How on Earth was this meant to fly in this day and age? It’s the completely wrong message and the completely wrong approach or tone for such a story.

 

As for the performances, no one other than J-Lo and Constance Wu get anything to do here really, and although J-Lo gives a colourful performance, I can’t remotely understand how she was supposedly robbed of an Oscar nomination. She’s the only amusing thing here, but good acting? Hardly, and let’s face it, playing a dancer isn’t exactly stretching herself. It’s what she’s already done for a living (I think it’s her chief talent actually, not acting or singing. She’s a damn good dancer). I’m not sure the stupid stud and all that smoking were particularly necessary, however. A bit heavy-handed there. As for poor Constance Wu, boy did she just go ahead and self-sabotage her career through misguided hubris. Perhaps having felt a taste of movie success with “Crazy Rich Asians” she obviously thought this film and this role were her big ticket out of TV sitcoms and into movie superstardom. The film was a hit, no doubt about it. It made money. But does it give anyone here any great exposure for their acting talent? Hardly. Based on her performance here…I think time’s gonna prove Ms. Wu’s rejection of the ‘easy’ option of staying on a sitcom might’ve been a bit of a boo-boo. It looked bad from a PR perspective (as have reports of her diva-like behaviour on the set of this film), but more importantly here, her performance is bland and entirely unconvincing. She lacks the necessary presence for such a big role, and greatly overdoes the ‘doe-eyed innocent’ shit early on. It isn’t believable, and ironically I think Wu’s best bet would’ve been to stay on television.

 

Basically a sanitised version of “Showgirls” crossed with a really bad version of “Goodfellas”. J-Lo gives a lively performance, though the Oscar snub cries were absurd. The film is otherwise mostly tedious, in poor taste, and completely unconvincing. The latter is especially true of Constance Wu’s performance, there’s a disconnect there between actress and character. The narrative flow here is sledgehammer-like, and I’d only recommend it to be people who think ‘Royals’ is a better song than ‘Gimme Shelter’ (Which is hopefully no one because ‘Gimme Shelter’ is a masterpiece and ‘Royals’ won’t be remembered in another 20 years). Yeah, I reacted pretty negatively towards this one. Your mileage may differ, especially if your plumbing is different to mine.

 

Rating: D+