There are few things I feel qualified to talk about in this world but the topic of con artist movies is one of them. I wrote a novel on the topic a few years ago and have picked apart any swindler film you care to name. Here's my initial, still solidifying thoughts on The Hustle based solely on the trailer.----I love when movies take a classic story and give it a twist. Westside Story is Romeo and Juliet in 1950's New York, Clueless is Emma is an LA high school and Helen Mirren as Prospera in The Tempest. The films all work despite making major changes the source material. I am still waiting for Donald Glover's Shaft starring Micheal Cera in the lead role.They all succeed because of what that change says about both the source material and the new world in which the new work exists. These types of changes fail when the motivation for the change is impure. Ghost In The Shell cast a white woman to play a Japanese character because Scarlet Johannson sells more tickets. Audiences saw through the ruse. Much COULD have been said with a black Annie in the 2014 film but the film was somehow less politically aware than the whiter than white (often racist) source material.Which brings me to The Hustle, the new remake starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson in the lead roles.The original film, Bedtime Story is a misogynistic tale in which women are the butt of the joke. Of the two warring con artist, "the loser" is the one who gets the girl. In the 1989 remake, the major change is that the woman IS a con artist and men are punished financially for their toxic misogyny. The change makes for a better film. We're laughing at Freddy and Lawrence being put through the wringer for their treatment of women.Crucially, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels also relies on putting the men in the role of "seductress". The con men act like the stereotype of manipulative women. They are gold diggers. They are Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The women give THEM jewelry and buy THEM dinner. We get a satire about the power dynamics between men and women.By placing women in the previously male roles in The Hustle, little is added to the existing story. Ocean's 8 worked because it explores female friendship in the same way Ocean's 11 explores male friendship. But placing women back in the gold digger role isn't a twist so much as an untwisting. It is defaulting back to the existing, tired trope of women being only after one thing. We already have Heartbreakers. It wasn't great.So, unless The Hustle has something else up its sleeve, I'm not sure this movie has much to add.TL;DR - The gender-swapped Dirty Rotten Scoundrel's remake doesn't work because Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is already a gender-swapped film.EDIT - To clarify, I have no interest in pre-judging a movie OR creating an Aladdin style mob. I'm more interested in the nature of these types of films as a general topic. via /r/movies http://bit.ly/2Byynrn
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