Very few films have screamed out more “Gal Pal*” than Hustlers. Yet I decided to go to this on my own on a Monday after work because, well an allegedly good film is an allegedly good film. There certainly were moments where the target demographic would’ve screamed “YES QUEEN**” Amongst this was the seeds of a promising story that just didn’t quite deliver.

Based on a true story, Dorothy (Constance Wu) has moved to New York and is struggling to get by as a stripper. She meets Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) who teaches her how to get better at her job. At this point they become best friends, work together and make a lot of money from the sleazy wall street men and life is good. However, the next year, the financial crisis happens and this affects Dorothy’s income. With a baby on the way, desperate times call for desperate measures. Therefore, Ramona and Dorothy start to meet these men in bars, get them drunk, drug them with Ketamine and MDMA , get them to the club and max out their credit cards. Obviously, cracks begin to show in their business plan and the film goes in predictable directions.

Wu and Lopez strike up a natural chemistry on screen, with the latter putting in a strong performance mixing tough strong women with an emotional integrity at other points. There is a desire for them to succeed when they are struggling, especially when they are trying to support their children and Dorothy’s grandmother.

However, when the drugging starts, I don’t feel as easy supporting them. I think this may be for two reasons. First may just be my demographic. The men at the beginning of the film are sleazy, and repulsive, therefore attempts to extort them can be justified as they also tanked the economy and everybody’s livelihoods. However, the method of drugging them is morally questionable and makes supporting our leads rather awkward, particularly when they start targeting random men in bars, who you know nothing about. This leads me on to the point which I feel is missing and was my biggest gripe of the whole film. There was a lack of back story. These characters were given to you, especially Ramona who just turns up one day. Give me a reason to support these characters to the end of the world as they carry out these activities. If they had spent 10-15 minutes giving us a story on these characters and how they got here and built up this world around them, the story would’ve been much more full.

This certainly could’ve been included instead of the last 15 minutes. At this point, the whole story felt rather bric-a-brac in its structure. It was trying to be smart while tying up its stories but it came across as not clever and unnecessary. The humour was also rather dumb (showing a picture of a chihuahua constantly isn’t funny), but the demographic seemed to like it, so whatever.

Summary

I came into this film hoping for a great heist story, but felt a little underwhelmed by a lack of world building and a pretentious ending. However, Lopez put in a strong performance and this film will be loved by certain demographics. [Grade: C]

At least James Corden didn’t come into this film with 30 minutes to go.

As I wasn’t a fan of this film, it’s only fair I give you a similar film which I think is better. My choice of that would be the much superior Widows.

*I promise never to use that phrase again.

**I couldn’t bring myself to misspell the word yes… Also I promise never to use that phrase again.