YMMV / Hustlers

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: One could interpret Destiny's arc as a lesson on the importance of responsible sex. She ends up getting pregnant (the way the film shows, it was clearly unplanned) and has to depend on the father for income, as her job is not one she can still do while pregnant. It's in fact because of her need to provide for Lily that she ends up robbing in the first place (although the 2008 recession hardly helped matters). Overall, though she clearly loves and adores her daughter, the unplanned pregnancy that she definitely wasn't ready for caused lots of problems in the long run.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • The morality of the strippers is a subject of debate both in and out of universe.
  • Destiny spends much of her interview laying out her reasons and justifications for her crimes. Yet the second Elizabeth states that she thinks the strippers were in the right, Destiny admits that what they were doing wasn't as honorable as she likes to pretend. Is she trying to convince Elizabeth or is she trying to convince herself?
  • Ramona's motivations are often left ambiguous. Is Destiny her Morality Pet or a tool for her scams? For that matter, are the rest of the women "strays" she's helping or just people more willing to follow her orders? The ending resolves it. Morality Pet through and through.
  • Destiny's grandmother seems oblivious to what her granddaughter does for a living, even when she makes a ton of money very quickly, with no apparent explanation as to how. So how oblivious was she really? It could be that she's aware Destiny is a stripper, and maybe even suspects she does something else on the side, but takes the view of "she's an adult, it's none of my business," and just decides not to ask.
• Award Snub: Despite the positive critical reception and Oscar buzz surrounding Jennifer Lopez (see She Really Can Act below) the movie failed to receive a single Academy Award nomination, a snub that was widely criticized by many media outlets.
• Best Known for the Fanservice:
  • This is the movie about strippers who rob people. Much like Magic Mike, much of the story is in fact about the strippers' lives outside their work, but of course, the sexy outfits are what drew the most attention.
  • Jennifer Lopez does a pole dance routine wearing barely anything. There's a reason it's the movie's signature scene.
• Critical Dissonance: The film's score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics is 88%, while the audience score is 66%. It's a downplayed example though, as the audience reception is still 'Fresh'.
• Girl-Show Ghetto: While the movie's box office return and critical acclaim defy the trope, the fact that this was passed over for any award nominations is questionable. The female centered story revolving around sex work may have been a contributing factor.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A movie involving strippers drugging and robbing men is made worse after Cardi B (who is in the movie) faced a lot of backlash for admitting to doing similar things in the past when she was a stripper and justified it by saying that she had to do it to survive.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Destiny spends a good portion of the present wondering what Ramona would have said to Elizabeth about her. We finally see that flashback, discovering Ramona keeps a picture of Destiny as a teenager alongside one of herself in her wallet. She wistfully tells Elizabeth that she wishes they'd known each other then, before everything, so they could have looked out for each other. After most of the run time being spent with it in question if Ramona was just using her or not, it turns out that no, she sincerely loved her like family.
  • The Christmas sequence where Destiny's grandmother gets to meet her granddaughter's friends and coworkers (even if she doesn't know what they do exactly). Destiny presents her with a gift of pearls, replacing the ones she had to pawn, and Ramona has even hung a stocking with 'Nana' on it. When she hears some of Nana's stories - including dancing with Frankie Valli - she clearly enjoys them and says something to the effect of "how have I not spent more time with you already?"
• Hype Backlash: After all the positive attention towards Jennifer Lopez's performance, many walked away saying that while it was better than her usually panned acting, her work didn't live up to the talk surrounding it and was deservingly snubbed.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • The strippers. They drug and rob men but are clearly struggling to make a living especially after the 2008 recession affected their club.
  • Besides Doug, the clients they target as well. Even though they are assholes, NO ONE (not even them) deserves to be drugged and robbed.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Even detractors of the movie say that Jennifer Lopez's performance is the best thing about it.
• Les Yay: So much between Ramona and Destiny, with the pair acting more like girlfriends than best friends, their affectionate nicknames like "baby" for each other and several lingering glances from one another. Although neither of them actually like having to get sexually intimate with each other, and it can be argued that their touchy-feely levels of comfort are the corollary of their line of work (with them wearing scarce clothing on work days, occasionally needing to teach other things that are genuinely valuable in the occupation such as lap-dancing, and abusive male customers frequently paying for Faux Yay).
• Moral Event Horizon: Ramona crosses it when she cons the completely innocent Doug despite the fact that his life was completely ruined beforehand. This causes Destiny, who was disturbed by the event, to turn on her.
• She Really Can Act:
  • Many of the reviews have praised Jennifer Lopez's performance as Ramona, with Christy Lemire's review calling it "Lopez’s best screen work since her early heyday of Selena and Out of Sight", while IndieWire's Critics Survey of the 2019 Toronto Film Festival saw it ranked the best female performance (and 4th best performance outright), and numerous other outlets suggesting Lopez could be a serious Oscar contender.
  • While Lili Reinhart was considered one of the better cast members of Riverdale, her character was considered an annoying Creator's Pet. As such, it was a pleasant surprise to see her play someone more flawed, funnier and in a generally different type of project.
• Signature Scene: Ramona's introductory pole dance routine is easily the most remembered part.
• Spiritual Adaptation: In some ways, this can be considered a stealth remake of The Bling Ring - also about real life girls who robbed people, with a Framing Device being an interview with a magazine reporter. Hustlers seems to win out, with the higher box office return and critical acclaim.
• The Woobie:
  • Doug. His house burned down, his wife left when she found out their son was autistic, and he only went to the club because his buddies wanted to give him a good night to relax. He's one of the only victims that the audience is intended to empathize with (and out of the main characters only Destiny feels bad about it) and yet Ramona cons him all the same.
  • Some of the strippers, notably Destiny and Annabelle, start out as this before moving into Jerkass Woobie territory. Destiny was abandoned by her parents as a child and struggles to care for her young daughter, while Annabelle was disowned by her family when she admitted to working at a strip club.

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