Anne Hathaway’s Remake Of A Crime Classic Is Killing It On Streaming
Anne Hathaway's The Hustle, a 2019 remake of the classic crime comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, is a hit on Amazon Prime.
It’s never easy to remake a high-caliber crime comedy film such as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson hit it out of the park with their performance in The Hustle. While the film mostly received negative reviews upon its theatrical run in 2019, it still grossed $97 million worldwide and continues to dominate streaming services. According to FlixPatrol, The Hustle is Amazon Prime’s seventh most-streamed film in the U.S.
It’s always best to consult the source material, and The Hustle definitely takes a page from the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels playbook. The film follows Penny Rust (Rebel Wilson) and Josephine Chesterfield (Anne Hathaway) in their journey to dupe men out of their money through elaborate cat-fishing scams. This is a perfect example of using modern technology to enhance the storytelling of the film that preceded it.
The difficulty with remakes starring strong female leads is that audiences hope not to see rehashed content but with a lead role gender swap. In the case of The Hustle, audiences found it refreshing that this film wasn’t just more of the same. Positive reviews on IMDb state that they’re glad they didn’t listen to the haters because the chemistry between Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson was there, and the jokes were funny.
There may be some comments about Anne Hathaway’s accent sounding slightly forced at times, but you can’t win them all.
Another important thing to consider is that not all remakes are going to be 100 percent faithful to the original, which is often a sore spot for die-hard fans. The overall sentiment is that viewers expecting to see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels for a new generation may be a little disappointed, but as a standalone film, The Hustle has legs. The simple fact of the matter is that Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson aren’t Steve Martin and Michael Cane.
The same can be said about the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels alums not being Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson. It’s okay to be different as long as the film is good.
If you’re willing to check out an adaptation of a comedy classic with a modern twist, strong female leads (enter Anne Hathaway), and elaborate scams, then The Hustle is the film for you. Think about it this way, if this remake was 100 percent faithful to its source material, people on the internet would still find a way to hate it. In other words, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels isn’t going anywhere, and will always be there for you to enjoy it.
In the meantime, Anne Hathaway’s The Hustle is a fresh spin on a classic plot, and totally worth a viewing. In today’s era of media consumption, films that don’t do well upon their initial release tend to pick up momentum on streaming services after their theatrical run. We’ve seen it before with Michael Keaton’s The Founder, and we’re seeing it again here with The Hustle.
