(2019) The Hustle - A Pretty Enjoyable Hustling Comedy Movie Strictly for Fun

I was not aware about this movie until I saw the poster in the coming soon section in the Indonesian cinema chain websites few weeks ago. When I tried to find out more, it turned out to be a movie that has been released in the US since May 2019 (more than 2 months ago). So I was not in a rush to see it on its premiere day yesterday. My wife and I just went to the cinema today and we chose to see it where there was a Bank promotion. Well I will just go straight to the movie now.

Brief Story Line

Penny (Rebel Wilson - Pitch Perfect 3, How to be Single etc) was a small time con artist who usually tricked men to gain some profit. She later on crossed path with a sophisticated con artist Josephine (Anne Hathaway - Ocean's 8, The Intern etc). Penny decided to learn the different ways of conning from Josephine who reluctantly took her in.


Things would be complicated when they tried to con a young tech billionaire named Thomas (Alex Sharp). So how would the story conclude? Find them all in this fun very light comedy movie.

End of Brief Story Line

OK when I saw the name Rebel Wilson in this movie, I could already foresee this would be a movie filled with funny moments from her. And it turned out that the film was indeed funny especially with her character. The comedic situation was due to the totally different characters of the chaotic Penny and the calm Josephine, plus some of the ways they conned people.

The hustling itself was not the very sophisticated, intelligently played, but a much lighter type. There was still a twist to surprise us, though my wife and I did guess it right before the movie finished. The plot was not that heavy and deep that would make you have to think so hard, because this is a comedy movie anyway. From what I understand, this was a remake of the critically acclaimed Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, so perhaps critics had very high expectations and were disappointed seeing this one (which could explain the low rating).

However, from our point of view, we enjoyed this a lot. There were jokes that were said to be unfunny, but for me and my wife, they made us laugh out loud (and some of the audience who were in the studio were enjoying it as well, from the sound of their laughter in a lot of the scenes). Btw, we waited for the movie to completely finish and surprisingly there was a post end credit scene which was funny as well.

For a movie that focused on the comedy, I thought Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway quite nailed it. I liked their interactions especially when they involved conning Thomas, although I personally thought the way Penny convinced Josephine to teach her was a bit too easy. Aside from those two main lead, there were also other support roles who provided some more fun like their victims, but the one that left me good impression was Albert (played by Nicholas Woodeson).

Overall I thought this was a fun enough comedy movie. Obviously you could not compare it with the higher quality hustling/con artist movies but it did have its moments. This is a movie for us to just have fun and enjoy some good laughs but that's just about it. It was certainly nothing fancy or a movie that you would remember a lot after seeing it, but at least for 1.5 hours we could relax and be entertained. So if you are looking just for that, then you can see this in the theater, but if you are expecting a deeply thought kind of hustle with multiple surprising twists, then you might be disappointed with this. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars