Hustlers, starring Jennifer Lopez as a stripper who goes smooth criminal during the Great Recession, is getting some great reviews. I’m going against the grain on this one, for I find it derivative, boring and hampered by a shallow script. So, why? Why has the film been receiving Scorsese comparisons—hey, it has tracking shots!—and high scores on Rotten Tomatoes? I think it’s because of the powers of Jennifer Lopez’s multimillion dollar ass. No question, as talented an actress as Lopez has been in the past (Selena, Out of Sight, shit, I liked her in Maid in Manhattan), her physical calling card has always been her ever-present, much ballyhooed butt. It beckons like an evil genie. Her ass has its own economy and solar system. In fact, as Jennifer Lopez did a pole dance in this film—for the obligatory “This is how you pole dance!” scene—I could swear I saw a little astronaut just off to the left of her ass performing a space walk. This is a movie in which Lopez bares and displays her crazily potent ass. I think that this has caused some sort of distraction—disruption if you will—in the movie critic ecosystem. People are so hypnotized by her backside that they fail to recognize the movie kind of blows.
Hustlers
