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Rating: 1 out of 5
Have you seen the movie Hustlers starring J-Lo? It is a great movie, and the girls are strippers that rob wealthy men. Let me be the first to say that there is nothing wrong with being a stripper. I’ve been to a couple of strip clubs in my college days. Who can forget T-Pain classic song, “I’m ‘n Luv (Wit a Stripper)”? What about Magic City in the ATL? The famous strip club where rappers go to get their break. If the song isn’t poppin’ in Magic City, then it ain’t in the real world. I bring all of this up because stripping isn’t that bad anymore, and films are slowly showing that.
My god, is this movie terrible in every way possible EXCEPT for Demi Moore strutting her stuff and shaking her ass. Striptease was what Hustlers could’ve been if it wasn’t so awful, and there is no way around it. The plot is meh, the characters are hilarious, and the tone is all over the place. What doesn’t help is that one character tries to be serious with a serious situation and all the other characters around her are the complete opposite. This could have been the set-up for Hustlers, but Hustlers pulled it off way better in a more entertaining way.
Based on Carl Hiaasen’s novel of the same name, the film centers on a former FBI secretary Erin Grant (Moore), losing custody of her young daughter Angela (Willis) to her ex-husband Darrell (Patrick), a criminal who cost Erin her job. Now the judge is entirely biased and states that the man has done his time and was the finest halfback he has ever seen. Really?? One is a criminal and the other works for the FBI, and you pick the criminal? Really?? To afford an appeal to try and get her daughter back, Erin becomes a stripper at the Eager Beaver, a strip club in Miami. One night while Erin is shaking her ass, a Congressman named David Dilbeck (Reynolds) visits the club and becomes infatuated with Erin. The dude straight up hits a dude across the head with a champagne bottle. As the Congressman runs out, another Eager Beaver regular spots him and yells out his name. Things become crazy as the Congressman’s obsession with Erin hits new levels, along with Erin trying to get her daughter back from her ex-husband. He loves to steal wheelchairs from hospitals to sell. Freakin’ wheelchairs.
Now I have never read Hiaasen’s novel, but from what I hear, it is supposed to be all comedy with crazy characters. Now the film does everything it’s supposed to with the main character. Erin seems entirely out of place in a world of crazy characters. She is this serious woman who wants to get her child back, which is the only reason she is there. That is why the film fails so much because you want to feel sorry for her, but her environment doesn’t call for it. The movie becomes confusing as it has no direction on whether it should be funny, erotic, satire, or serious. It seemed like it threw all those concepts in a blender and said whatever comes out, we will roll with it because what the hell we got to lose.
On the other side of the film is how crazy some of the things you hear. Ving Rhames’s character is a bouncer who is trying to get rich. His bright idea is putting a massive roach in yogurt and then claiming that they are in health violations. You have one girl who, after dancing, says there is a famous person in the crowd like Michael Jordan. There is a stripper that dances with a snake, but for some reason, the snake gets killed by a rival club, and the owner sends the bouncer to buy a new one. The only problem is that the snake tries to strangle the girl on stage. As the Congressman, Burt Reynolds is so far out there that he stands in boots and Vaseline. He is one of the best characters. Honestly, these are the best parts of the whole movie. The characters seem to flow naturally and are free, but when Erin is around them, it becomes serious, and the tone is off.
Demi Moore might’ve tried to be extremely serious, but her stripping scenes were nice to look at. I’m not even going to front on it. Did you see homegirl’s body? DAMN!!!! She was looking lovely in all the right areas. Now I am no expert on stripping or even dancing, but Moore seemed to know greatly on how to shake that ass even with some questionable songs.
The one and only reason to watch this film are to see Demi Moore naked. The plot, characters, and everything else can be put to the wayside or even forgotten. A better idea is to watch Hustlers or even go to an actual strip club.
