We’re just gonna say it: It’s probably a bad idea to remake a movie that’s as much of a stone-cold classic as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a personality-driven and incredibly funny film that feels almost inseparable from the work of Michael Caine and Steve Martin, its two leads. However, that film, in and of itself, was a remake — or at least an adaptation of a draft of a previously-made film — and so whatever feelings we might have about Chris Addison’s The Hustle, an Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson-led reboot of that classic film, have to be tempered by that knowledge. Because based on the trailer that MGM dropped for the film on Tuesday morning, our first reaction is to freak out and scream about how they’re doing Caine and Martin dirty here. It’s not very good.
Take a look (if you dare):
It just doesn’t look very… funny, you know? It feels like Hollywood just doesn’t understand what made Wilson so funny in the first place, in something like Bridesmaids, even if her ascent to film-leading superstardom is a welcome, if poorly-done, change to our filmic landscape (we are kind of excited for Isn’t It Romantic, though). Hathaway’s posh accent is kind of odd, too, and we’re curious about Addison’s resume, given that he’s only worked on a couple of episodes of Veep before this motherfucker right here. We’d like to be wrong about this, and we’d especially like it if it were as anywhere near as good as the original. Is that so much to ask?
Here’s the official synopsis:
“In the hilarious new comedy ‘The Hustle,’ Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson star as female scam artists, one low rent and the other high class, who team up to take down the dirty rotten men who have wronged them.”
The Hustle hits theaters on May 10, alongside Detective Pikachu and the J.R.R Tolkien biopic. We’ll take the under for whatever the predicted box office gross is, tbh.