The Hustle includes a post-credits scene, but you don’t need to stick around for it. A gender-swapped remake of Frank Oz’s 1988 comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (itself, a remake of the 1964 comedy Bedtime Story), The Hustle stars Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson as a pair of con artists - one highly sophisticated, the other not so much - who compete to swindle a young tech billionaire (Alex Sharp) out of $500K. The movie was shot in 2017 and was originally scheduled to hit theaters almost a year ago. Ultimately, however, MGM elected to move it to May 2019, in an effort to boost its odds of success at the box office.
Reviews for The Hustle have been mostly negative so far, with critics taking the film to task for being a sloppy remake that fails to do anything particularly creative or forward-thinking with its gender-swapped approach. At the same time, Hathaway’s been praised for her over the top comedic performance, and the movie is expected to attract a crowd in the mood for some light-hearted entertainment this weekend. That being said: those who do see The Hustle in theaters can feel comfortable about leaving as soon as the end credits start rolling.
While The Hustle does, in fact, include a post-credits scene, it’s nothing you need to hang around for. In fact, it’s technically not an additional scene at all. Rather, it’s an outtake from an earlier sequence in the movie, where Hathaway and Wilson’s characters perform a string of cons collectively referred to as the “Lord of the Rings” trick. The scheme revolves around Hathaway pretending to be wealthy royalty and accepting expensive engagement rings from a variety of wealthy would-be husbands… only to reveal her sister (Wilson), who scares them off by behaving in some bizarrely horrible fashion.
All things considered, The Hustle’s credits stinger is a bit of a waste. There’s nothing especially memorable about the clip (suffice it to say, there’s a reason it was cut from the film proper), and it doesn’t add anything to the plot or, say, involve the cast breaking character in a funny manner. More than that, it feels like the movie squandered an opportunity to provide some payoff to a narrative thread involving “Medusa”, a legendary, but otherwise mysterious con woman who’s mentioned earlier during the story. Sorry to say, The Hustle fails to follow through on that setup by having a big name starlet show up as “Medusa” in the post-credits scene (or something to similar effect).
Post-credits scenes are, of course, increasingly commonplace in films these days, and not just superhero and/or franchise movies either; heck, even last year’s Dick Cheney biopic, Vice, had one. As a result, more and more people have come to expect them from mainstream films like The Hustle, and started waiting through the end credits to see them (something that’s obviously polite to do anyway, as a gesture of respect for the production crew). And while The Hustle tries to give patient audience members their money’s worth by actually including something after the credits, it’s a bit of a half-hearted effort.
- The Hustle Release Date: 2019-05-10
