Movies about strippers don’t come along that often, but when they do, they tend to be either huge success stories or risible bombs. For every The Full Monty or Magic Mike there’s a Showgirls or two, but one of the more recent contributions to the highly specific subgenre was a runaway success.
Written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, Hustlers was inspired by a 2015 article from New York magazine, but the feature film adaptation naturally took a lot of creative license. The story follows Constance Wu’s Destiny, who befriends Jennifer Lopez’s Ramona, where she teaches her new pal how to swindle clients out of money as she masterminds a crime operation from the confines of a club.
Naturally, the gang get in much deeper than they’d planned, with plenty of twists and turns along the way. Hustlers was a major hit at the box office after earning close to $160 million on a $20 million budget, winding up with an impressive 87% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a much deserved Best Supporting Actress nomination at the Golden Globes for Lopez, who gives what’s comfortably a career-best performance.
Even though Christmas movies are everywhere you look on streaming as we get deeper into December, Hustlers has somehow managed to become one of the ten most-watched titles on Hulu this weekend, as per FlixPatrol.