Tag: Anne Hathaway

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The Hustle

I love a good con artist film. It’s a different animal from a heist film, where the thrill is in the elaborate planning and then the reveal of how the plan worked out, or more often, didn’t work out. In a con film, the fun comes from the fact that the con artists and the audience are in on the secret, and everybody else is in the dark. In The Sting, we become invested in Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s massive parimutuel betting con. That’s when it’s played for fun. In The Grifters, Stephen Frears explored the dark side of the con. Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, and Annette Bening take turns trying to rip off the world and each other, but they’re revealed to be not charming knaves, but the kind of abusive, amoral sociopaths who would actually con a person out of their last dollar.

Somewhere in between those two extremes is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Directed by Frank Oz, the 1988 film starred comedic superman Steve Martin and prestige actor with underutilized comic chops Michael Caine. Both are con men, but with dramatically different styles. Caine is a European sophisticate who knows where the rich, gullible widows are because he’s from the milieu. Martin is something of a confidence idiot savant, disorienting his targets with a barrage of bullshit. The younger grifter wants to learn from the older grifter, but they end up at odds — neither one of them is exactly trustworthy, you see. There ain’t room enough in the French Riviera for the two of them, so they make a bet: The first one to con a rich heiress out of $50,000 wins, and the loser must leave town.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels isn’t the greatest comedy of the ’80s, but it definitely has its moments, and a couple of decades as basic cable fare has earned it an audience. It’s ripe for a remake, and as you know, 21st-century Hollywood abhors a remake vacuum. Or something.

Anne Hathaway and Rebel WIlson

The driving force of The Hustle is Rebel Wilson, Australian comedian who produced the film and stars in the Steve Martin role. Wilson’s Penny Rust is a professional catfisher who reels in her rich, conceited, yet dopy marks on Tinder. She falls victim to the con artist’s biggest occupational hazard: when you’ve been too successful and you’ve got to leave town ahead of your vengeful victims.

Inspired by a travel magazine, she sets off to France, where, by chance, she meets Josephine Chesterfield, played by Anne Hathaway. Josephine has refined conning old men out of their excess capital into a science. She does her research, surveils her targets, and then hits them in their most psychologically vulnerable spots. From the moment she sees Penny on a train talking a guy out of a free dinner, she recognizes the game. Fearing an oversaturated con market in the hoity toity French Riviera town she prowls, Josephine tries to misdirect Penny. But the ugly American keeps coming back, and the two prideful con artists are off, trying to one-up each other for money, jewels, and bragging rights.

Like Martin and Caine, Hathaway and Wilson have the chemistry to pull this off. Josephine, who at one point gives a speech about how the best way for a woman to con a man is to let him underestimate her, repeatedly underestimates Penny’s cunning. The mark the two artists compete to fleece out of an inflation-adjusted $500,000 is Thomas Westerburg (Alex Sharp), a newly minted tech billionaire who needs to be relieved of the burden of so much IPO cash. In true con movie fashion, he turns out to be more than meets the eye.

British comedy actor Chris Addison makes his directorial debut with The Hustle, and he may be the problem with the film. Hathaway has too much fun flipping through her portfolio of accents and wardrobe of slinky dresses, while Wilson is having a blast doing physical comedy. Like in its inspiration, there are a high points where it all works, such as when Hathaway takes the personae of a severe German psychologist to cure Wilson’s faked hysterical blindness. It’s well edited, and there are no obvious, throw it against the wall improv passages, which have marred recent comedies like the Ghostbusters remake.

And yet, The Hustle never really gels to become more than a sum of its parts. Martin and Caine seemed to genuinely dislike each other, which gave Dirty Rotten Scoundrels an air of transgressive danger. Wilson and Hathaway seem like friends playing out a silly bet. They’re too comfortable, and too safe. I didn’t hate this movie, but the laughs never reached critical mass for me, either. Like What Men Want, it’s a gender flipped comedy remake that ultimately fails to rise to the quality of the onscreen talent.

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Ocean’s 8

What is the appeal of the heist movie? Is it about watching a supremely clever person concoct an elaborate plan, and then reveling in the OCD perfection when all the pieces click into place? Is it about the powerless getting one over on the powerful? Or is it all about the charisma of the criminal mastermind, a way for the audience to harmlessly indulge their need for a leader?

The history of heist pictures goes all the way back to the beginnings of American cinema, and they’ve always been popular. The Great Train Robbery held the record for highest grossing movie from 1903 until Birth of a Nation in 1915. It was also the subject of the first remake in history, when Edwin S. Porter’s original film was redone by Sigmund Lubin and released under the same title in the same year.

The only heist movie that’s been remade almost as often as The Great Train Robbery is Ocean’s 11. The original is a curious artifact: a massive vanity project put on by the Rat Pack as their Las Vegas decadence reached fever pitch. It’s not a great movie. Frank Sinatra is visibly distracted, while Martin is visibly drunk. It’s a bunch of celebrities cynically cashing in on their fame, best enjoyed by fans who are content just to look at their heroes.

Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter star in writer/director Gary Ross’ Ocean’s 8.

That’s one of the reasons Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 Ocean’s 11 remake was so surprising: It was actually a pretty good movie. Just as the original cemented the Rat Pack as the pre-eminent stars of the early 1960s, so too did Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11 define the first batch of 21st-century superstars: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, and Andy Garcia. Julia Roberts was the lone feminine presence to redeem the sausage fest.

Soderbergh took the barely-there plot of trying to rob a bunch of casinos at once and honed it to a razor edge. His editing was tight and cinematography outstanding. The 2001 Ocean’s 11 wasn’t just an object of fan admiration — although it unmistakably was on some level — but unambiguously good filmmaking. It’s trashy fun, but incredibly well executed.

A female driven remake was inevitable in the #MeToo era. The ragtag band of thieves camaraderie translates perfectly into the girl power moment, and high-powered talent agencies would love to see their clients put into the roles that women all over the world would imprint on. In the Sinatra/Clooney slot is Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean, the younger sister of Danny Ocean, who, we find out in the opening shots of the film, is dead. Probably.

The film gets off to a good start with Bullock faking sincerity in her parole hearing. She’s got the smooth prattle and irresistible charisma of the Ocean family down pat. Less than a day after being released from her five-year stint in the pen, she’s shoplifted a whole new wardrobe and fraudulently ensconced herself in a luxury hotel. Then, there’s the requisite gathering of the team: Lou (Cate Blanchett), a crooked New York nightclub owner; Amita (Mindy Kaling), a jeweler; Constance (Awkwafina) the pickpocket; a hacker known as Nine Ball (Rihanna); and Tammy (Sarah Paulson), a big time fence hiding out as a suburban mother of two. The plan, which Debbie came up with while in solitary confinement, is to steal a necklace called The Toussaint, valued at $150 million. To steal it, it has to be lured out into the open at the Met Gala, an annual, super ritzy fashion world party thrown by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To do that, the gang targets Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter), a fashion designer drowning in debt, to convince superstar actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway) to use her clout to convince Cartier to let the necklace out of the vault so she can wear it for the party.

During the scenes inside the simulated Met Gala, Ocean’s 8 functions extremely well as lifestyle porn with a more propulsive plot than Fifty Shades of Grey. The actresses are rarely called upon to do much more than stand around and look cool, so heavy hitters like Blanchett and Paulson are out-cooled by a spliff-smoking Rihanna. In that way, Ocean’s 8 is much more like the 1960 Ocean’s 11 than the 2001 version. Unfortunately, director Gary Ross fundamentally lacks the Soderbergh snap that was on display in last year’s Logan Lucky. But if you’re just in it to look at some of the best actresses in the business pal around for a frothy summer treat, Ocean’s 8 will do just fine.

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Colossal

When I am called upon to give lectures on screenwriting, one of the things I like to talk about is the Giant Robot Problem. It goes something like this: From Voltron to Optimus Prime to the Big O, everybody loves giant robots — especially the Japanese. What could be cooler than strapping into a 30-story, humanoid mecha and crushing your enemies beneath your giant metal boots? But if giant robots are so cool, why haven’t we built one yet? After all, we can put a man on the moon and take selfies with our lunch — why not Voltron?

The answer is, as cool as they look, giant robots aren’t really good for much. Anything a giant robot can do, you can use a specialized tool to do better. Need an invulnerable war machine? We have those. They’re called tanks. Want to dig a giant hole in the ground? You can either spend billions building a giant robot and give it a giant shovel, or you can just rent a commercial earth mover. Basically, the only things giant robots are good for are fighting giant monsters or other giant robots, and since neither one of those actually exists, we don’t build giant robots. This is why long-running anime series starring giant robots always evolve into soap operas about the people who drive the giant robots, proving that character development is always the most important element.

Director Nacho Vigalondo’s new film Colossal adds new dimensions to the eternal dance between giant monster and giant robot, while reinforcing the principle that character development is everything. Like any great kaiju movie, it begins in an Asian megalopolis — in this case, Seoul — with an innocent child witnessing the arrival of a giant monster. The dark, scaly, hundred-meter-tall creature materializes in a cloud of lightning and mystery, only to vanish again just as quickly.

Fast forward to 25 years later, and we meet Gloria (Anne Hathaway), a magazine writer in New York living with her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens). At least, Gloria used to be a magazine writer. She got laid off a year ago, and now she mostly just parties hard with her semi-glamorous publishing friends while mooching off of the dregs of Tim’s largesse. But Tim’s done watching her drink herself into an early grave, and he gives her the boot from his swank Manhattan apartment.

Thus, Gloria is faced with the ultimate nightmare of every young go-getter who goes to the Big Apple to get her fame and fortune: She has to move back home to the small town where she came from. Living alone in the vacant house where she grew up, she vows to quit drinking and get her life back on track. But her plan, and her sobriety, is instantly undermined in a chance meeting with Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), an old friend from elementary school who, wouldn’t you know it, runs the neighborhood watering hole. Soon, she’s working night shifts in the bar and staying after close to pound beers with Oscar, local loudmouth Garth (Tim Blake Nelson), and the quiet-but-hunky handyman Joel (Austin Stowell).

Around the same time, the mysterious monster reappears in Seoul. But this time, it’s back for all to see, trashing neighborhoods and killing hundreds of hapless Koreans as it rampages through the city. Only it’s not really rampaging so much as wandering aimlessly, seemingly distracted by invisible specters only it can see. The world pays rapt attention to the improbable drama, but Gloria notices something strange about the monster’s behavior. It seems to have the same tics she does, such as nervously scratching at the top of its head, and its uncoordinated ramblings look a lot like her movements when she’s stumbling home drunk every morning. Could she somehow be unwittingly controlling the monster? Meanwhile, her relationship with her childhood friend Oscar is taking an unhealthy, controlling turn — just as the giant monster of Seoul is joined by an equally mysterious giant robot.

Colossal‘s gimmick is gigantic, but the meat of this fascinating little picture is the interactions of a pair of ordinary, down-on-their-luck people just trying to create lives that make sense. Like Being John Malkovich, Colossal uses a fantastical premise to explore real human emotions and psychology. Hathaway and Sudeikis are both brilliant in this psychologically complex examination of how one person’s inner conflicts can ripple outward and affect people who have little to do with the original issues, even if, in this case, those people are being crushed underfoot half a world away.