Jessica's Thoughts - Hustlers
*IMDb synopsis: Inspired by the viral New York Magazine article, Hustlers follows a crew of savvy former strip club employees who band together to turn the tables on their Wall Street clients.
Well, I’ll come right out of the gate with what I wrote in my Letterboxd review: “Omg what a friggin’ fantastic movie. Loved the shit out of this.”
I went into this with little to no expectations, just the knowledge that it was getting outrageously good buzz considering it was a movie about strippers starring J. Lo. This isn’t really my cup of tea.
As soon as we got the movie’s framing device, of Constance Wu’s Destiny recounting her life and the criminal events as part of an interview for a magazine exposé, I was hooked. But why did it work? Why was a movie this offbeat really damn good?
Besides the cinematography looking great, the script being airtight, the framing device being a decent way to move the plot, the juicy, scandalous crime, and the draw of the underground stripper scene, there was a lot of estrogen behind the camera. Hustlers was co-written and directed by Lorene Scafaria along with Jessica Pressler, who wrote the real-deal magazine article from which the movie was adapted. Hey, maybe there’s something to women writing and portraying women, ya know? But I digress…
I consider J. Lo an athlete. She’s a well-oiled machine who takes care of her temple. Her pole dancing in this movie was amazing, but I didn’t watch this movie just to see J. Lo on a stripper pole, not by any stretch. I was glad that wasn’t the main to-do in this film.
It’s all part of the plot development. Ramona’s excellent pole skills are why Destiny is drawn to her in the first place. Ramona rakes in literal handfuls of money with her pole routine, and Destiny sweetly asks her for training. It was interesting, however, that the real Ramona, a.k.a. Samantha Barbash, has been an outspoken hater of the film—a result of the producers apparently offering her pennies, not paying her for her life story nor consulting her for anything, and J. Lo not personally connecting with her—and has said “I don't even know how to do a trick, I've never been on a stripper pole like that in my life.” Ha!
I have to say that my favorite sequences were toward the beginning of the movie, when times are still good and the club is busy and the girls were having a ball backstage. That’s when we see Lizzo and Cardi B make their appearances.
Lizzo cameos her incredible flute playing and later contributes to an epic group rant about how men think it’s such a good idea to date a stripper—they want to fulfill this male fantasy but then get upset when the last thing the girls want to do when they get home is wear lingerie, heels, and makeup (not to mention the insane jealousy of having their girl strip for a living). It was a nice touch to have the recurring joke(?) of one girl’s boyfriend show up at the club time and time again.
Cardi B teaches Constance Wu a thing or two about lap dances, but really, I could have used any number of Cardi B-isms in this movie. At least we got the brilliant line “drain the clock, not the cock”!
The best part of this movie was when Usher shows up at the club. I repeat—USHER HIMSELF cameos in this movie, strolling in to his own song “Love in This Club” in slow motion. I died. Thank God this moment happened.
The movie blessedly had some comedic bits. The running gag of Lili Reinhart’s Annabelle vomiting any time she was stressed or scared was hilarious, and Ramona and Destiny cooking the perfect drug cocktail in the kitchen and an abrupt cut revealing them passed out on the floor were highlights.
After the crash of 2008, once the ladies start their felony stint, Destiny’s interviewer (played by Julia Stiles) pauses her story with a “Let’s go back to the drugging.” I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in the theater that felt the same as Destiny and thought the interviewer was rude.
But that’s when Constance Wu’s Destiny realizes that she’s not making a new friend, that she’s being interviewed for a story that may have a specific bias against her, and she halts the damn thing to aggressively ask the interviewer a series of questions. It becomes clear that Stiles can’t relate in the slightest to Destiny’s upbringing, the circumstances around the crime, any sort of desperation deriving from poverty or abandonment. I liked that part quite a bit. It made Destiny seem more powerful, more in charge, and have way more agency than she had under Ramona’s shadow.
To be honest, there wasn’t a whole lot to hate in this movie. I adored the final call Destiny places to Stiles’s Jessica wanting to know what else Ramona said. We flashback to Jessica’s conversation with Ramona in what appears to be the manager’s office at the Old Navy she was now working at. Ramona tells this mildly terrifying story of coming back to a home invasion and disliking that all her valuables were so vulnerable. Thus, she now keeps everything of value on her person. The items she reveals were of no monetary value but held sentimental value. Her grandfather’s patch, the photos—they were more priceless to her than any jewel or bag or chinchilla fur coat that she flaunted during the movie. And I loved how this simple revelation meant that all the camaraderie and sisterhood was more valuable to Ramona than the material wealth.
J. Lo gives such a sweet but hard performance throughout and delivers the movie’s final line: “This whole country’s a fucking strip club. You got people tossin’ the money and people doing the dancin’.” And I’m inclined to believe her.
4/5