The movie Hustlers brings you a sexual-storm that makes you want to drop it like it’s hot while showing the strength of sisterhood and being unashamed in your skin.
Being a stripper is a way of life for some or a way to make ends meet for others. Based on actual events from Jessica Pressler’s Dec. 28, 2015, article in New York Magazine and Lorene Scafaria’s direction you take a never-ending cycle of drugs, sex, and money, not necessarily in that order. That doesn’t stop until it’s too late.
Jennifer Lopez plays Ramona, a smoking hot stripper, who is about the mighty dollar. She is the moneymaker at a Manhattan strip club. This movie takes you down a timeline with Ramona and Destiny (Constance Wu) and their so-called family.
In 2007 Ramona met a skinny little Asian woman named Destiny and saw the potential in her. With four little words, “Climb in my fur,” Destiny’s life changed.
Women in the club who didn’t give Destiny a second glance were now giving her private lap dance lessons. One, in particular, is Diamond portrayed by Grammy winner Cardi B, her first words to Destiny were “Bi***, stay out my section,” but now that she is close with Ramona, Destiny has some clout.
Romona is a lioness and lethal weapon and very manipulative and verges on being a narcissist. Destiny, a follower, gives you the notion that she will never be a leader. Even at the end of her journey, the only thing she leads herself into is becoming a snitch and losing what little family she had left.
Destiny had a horrible childhood. Her parents left her at her grandparents’ house and never turned back. You guessed it. Yup, she’s a people-pleaser who will do anything to fit in, which leads her into trusting too easy and loving too hard.
Ramona, Destiny, Mercedes (Keke Palmer), and Annabelle (Lili Reinhart) were all strippers with the need for money and each other. But who needs who more?
Some would call what Ramona is doing pimping, but considering they never had sex with any clients; it’s not pimping. However, when you throw the label family on it, it becomes a little hard to see through the ugliness.
When things get risky for the “family.” Ramona is on this “me me me” kick. Destiny wants things to run smoothly. Mercedes wants to marry her jailbird boyfriend, and Annabelle is just a cat-loving homebody, who vomits every time she gets nervous.
You can see things are about to go south. So many different personalities being run by one puppet master, Ramona. Feeling she can get more bang for her buck, Ramona suggests they recruit new girls for their business.
If you’re thinking they were selling their goodies, you; my dear reader are wrong. It’s worse.
Imagine being a grown man with Wall Street money, Ivy League education, and the world at your fingertips, just looking for a good time. It’s just your luck you meet a beautiful Latina (Ramona) who has not one, not two, but three just as beautiful sisters.
Mind you, Ramona’s sisters are Asian (Destiny), African American (Mercedes), and Caucasian (Annabelle). Some look a little suspect to me. They are ordering round after round, yet you’re the only drunk one.
The strippers were drugging these men with Ketamine and MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) cocktails. Then they would drain their bank accounts of fifty thousand dollars a swipe, and they were swiping their VISA’s like windshield wipers during a hurricane.
One of Ramona’s new recruits is a junkie and snitch, and just like that, their ship went down like the Titanic. Everyone was arrested. Destiny snitched on everyone because she just remembered she had a baby with rapper G-Eazy, who plays Destiny’s deadbeat baby father, Johnny.
This movie overall was booty-shaking good. I enjoyed every minute of it, as did moviegoer Samantha Gibson and others that clapped their hands as the credits rolled.
“I’m glad I got to see it early, but it’s definitely worth the wait for those who didn’t,” says Gibson while exiting the theater.