I missed Hustlers last week, and I heard good things about it so I wanted to make sure I saw it this week.  Unfortunately, I did not find it as entertaining as I expected.

A group of women strippers, led by Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) and Destiny (Constance Wu), in order to make ends meat, start drugging high brow strip club attendees to steal money from them.

Honestly, I was bored at the first half of the movie.

I thought both Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu were really good in their roles.  Lopez, in particular, delivers probably her best performance ever.  The problem, for me, was the rest of the film was not as strong as I thought it would be.

There are some funny moments in the film, but that is countered by the rottenness of the characters being shown.  In the end, they absolutely are criminals who are stealing from these men. Yes, these men are from Wall Street and shown as cheaters, and the film does its best to dehumanize the men (for the most part, which is an interesting contradiction to typical films), but that still does not make it right.

The relationship between Lopez and Wu’s characters are definitely the drawing point for the best scenes of the movie, but there is a lot of ugliness involved as well.

Based on a true story,  Hustlers was not the movie I was expecting, and, while I did not like this movie much, I was very much impressed with Jennifer Lopez and think she legitimately has a chance at an Academy Award nomination.

2.75 stars

Of course, maybe my opinions were altered by the jerks beside me who kept going on their phones.  I hate that!