I’m all for this wave of gender flipped remakes. Why should the boys get to have all the fun? So I revisited Dirty Rotten Scoundrels as homework for this lady friendly redo (I have since learned there have been earlier versions, but for the purposes of this blog, we’re considering DRS the original) and didn’t care for it. Michael Caine and Steve Martin are legends whom I adore very very much. However, I didn’t find it very funny. I actually found it rather cringey and I was a bit uncomfortable watching it. I hoped that the gender flip would alleviate some of the issues I had problems with. And it did help some, but not quite enough.
Caine and Martin pass on the con to Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson. If you’ve seen DRS, then you know the ENTIRE PLOT. I can’t remember the last time a remake truly did stick so closely to its source material. Sure, some details are changed and the jokes are different, but it’s the exact same structure.
Was it a worthy upgrade? Well, it was a bit more feminist, so that fixed some of the issues. Yet it was still pretty cringey in its humor. I just wasn’t finding it very funny. Plus since I already knew where the story was going, I didn’t even get the fun of the twists and turns because it turned into the exact same twists as before.
I will say tho that I do absolutely adore these leading ladies. They were certainly bringing their A game, but unfortunately the material didn’t provide a worthy playing field. I really would love to watch them work together again in a better film.
The Hustle – \m/ \m/ \n