American Hustle

Watched this with the wife last night; it was her idea.  Me, I don’t trust Hollywood to deliver a good movie, though I am more than willing to be surprised.  (And as a result, more than usually disappointed.) 

So what did I think?

Surprise: I didn’t like it.  I know I’m going against the grain here, but I can give four specific reasons why.

First, it was too long.  It’s my humble opinion that – historical or literary epics aside – no movie needs to be over 105 minutes long.  That’s an hour and 45 minutes.  Earlier in the day we watched Rocky Balboa with the girls, and that clocked in perfectly (1:42), which only added to the pleasantly astonishing goodness of that flick.  American Hustle ran on and on and on for 138 minutes – two hours and 18 minutes, 33 minutes longer than my rule of thumb. 

Second, the movie tried too hard to be a period piece.  Every scene had something – or a couple of somethings – crying out, “Hey, it’s the late Seventies!!!”  Look at the bad hair!  See the disco ball!   Hey, everyone knows all the lyrics to the obscure “classic” rock songs!  Wow – that guy’s doing coke!  Ooh, the loud clothes!  Every single scene.

Third, everyone overacts.  Everyone.  Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence.  I mean, how do these people live with their Constant and Never-ending Personal Public Crises?  Oh, it’s so tiresome.  The actor who overacted the least is Robert DeNiro, who plays a role he’s played so many times he could do it in his sleep – the malevolent mobster.  Though I will admit that he steals the scene he’s in and the menace he brings made me actually physically nervous.  DeNiro aside, this seriously annoyed me.

Fourth, Hollywood has to think everyone in the world uses the F-bomb.  Everything is F-this and F-that.  And they think women can only be strong and tough if they pepper their dialogue with Fs.  That’s not been my experience in real life. I had the wife cracking up doing my “Hollywood” version of a day in the life at my job – if everyone used the F-word in every sentence.  The kindly old lady, for instance, who monitors the bank accounts, F’ing this and F’ing that.  Oh, and I threw in some American Hustle-style overacting too.

However – and it’s the essential however here – I do like movies that deal with this subject.  Scamming.  Scammers nabbed and scamming to save themselves.  You never know who’s scamming who, who’s being played, who’s real and who’s fake, how the antiheroes are going to get out of the mile-deep hole they find themselves in.  I enjoy the second-guessing and the Big Surprise at the end, which the movie, it must be said, did have.  So I can’t totally pan the movie for style when the substance was indeed interesting.  

Grade: C+