Hustlers Parent Guide

Destiny (Constance Wu) has been struggling to make ends meet, drifting between careers, and primarily supporting herself and her elderly grandmother by stripping. In her new club in New York City she meets Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), who teaches her how to spot wealthy Wall Street patrons and squeeze all the cash out of them she can. But then Destiny discovers she’s pregnant just as the 2008 financial crisis makes stripping a lot less lucrative. Luckily, Ramona and her fellow exotic dancers are resourceful. They decide to boost their incomes by finding wealthy stockbrokers, getting them borderline unconscious with drugs and alcohol, and racking up big charges on their credit cards.

I didn’t have high hopes for this movie, but I was pleasantly surprised at its emotional heart. There’s no doubt Hustlers gets some salacious appeal from being set in a shaker bar, but the film focuses more on the characters as complex people than on ogling their bodies as their clothes come off. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of pole dancing going on, but actual nudity is almost completely limited to secondary characters in the background. Ramona, Destiny, and the other women are the focus of the story as they develop their relationships with each other and find ways to get along in a precarious economic climate.

There’s also a certain schadenfreude in watching the supposed Wall Street geniuses responsible for the financial crisis (who preserved their own wealth and pensions) get taken for thousands of dollars by a group of women they treat with total disregard. While I don’t advocate drugging and robbing white collar criminals, I will admit to a visceral pleasure in watching these “Masters of the Universe” get taken down a notch.

Obviously, Hustlers is completely unsuitable for family viewing. While revenge might be satisfying, it’s hardly a redeeming moral message, let alone one strong enough to counterbalance the cascade of content concerns with the film. And there are lots of content issues – from the 100 profanities in the film to the ubiquitous use of drugs and alcohol, and the non-stop sexual content. Not surprisingly, a movie about strippers features nudity, scenes of exotic dancing, and sexual situations. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So yes, it’s a based-on-a-true-story movie about strippers who rob their clients blind by plying them with drugs and alcohol. But it’s got a surprising amount of humanity mixed in there along with the pole dancing. And some full-frontal male nudity, just to get back at the straight guys who paid their admission to see J-Lo strip. Seems fair to me.