POSITIVES…
A movie about strippers stealing money from rich people? It’s a good premise that takes you some places, and isn’t as easy as that description.
Story does a good job making the main characters sympathetic enough for us to get behind their criminal act.
Story also does a good job making the main characters objectionable enough for us to remember that they are still doing criminal acts.
This approach of making the main characters complicated, is what makes them well rounded and three dimensional enough to make us care, and want to see it through until the end.
Those main characters BTW are Constance Wu as Destiny, and Jennifer Lopez as Ramona. Both are fantastic in their roles, and both have great chemistry together on screen. Wu and Lopez really do carry the movie.
While it’s primarily a drama, there are some fun comedic moments, and good thrilling scenes as well.
There are also some titillating scenes that guys will find to be a huge positive. J-Lo doing a strip tease and showcasing her most famous body parts? Yeah that’ll get some of you guys to watch this very feminist film.
Writer / Director Lorene Scafaria has some really good stylistic directing choices for certain scenes. Consider me impressed with some of those decisions.
There are some great lines spoken by the actresses, but one of the best ones perfectly closes out the movie.
NEGATIVES…
There are times it felt like the movie was just spinning its wheels, as there were some scenes that came off as “filler.”
Not all of the plot points introduced are resolved, and that might irk some people.
The pacing can be a little slow at times.
With a 110 minutes runtime, the movie actually felt long to me.
“man-hating.” I’m sure there will be people out there that will toss this word around to describe the movie. The POV is a little one-sided, but not completely one-sided.
I get it and all, but if the movie is trying to realistically depict strippers stripping for those dolla dolla billz, I expect at least some suggestion that the strippers are actually stripping. Have it done off-frame for all I care, but when a stripper leaves the stage still pretty damn clothed after coming off a dance where she received tons of money, then that’s cheating and breaking my suspension of disbelief. Why am I ranting about this fact? eerrrmmm
P.S….
lovedit ENJOYED IT likedititsokayitsmehitsterrible
