Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson’s new comedy The Hustle pulls an inelegant con
Film Reviews Movie Review
When it comes to source material to plug into the trend of gender-flipped comedy remakes, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels isn’t actually a bad choice. The 1988 Frank Oz film—itself a remake of a 1964 Marlon Brando/David Niven comedy—is in many ways already about gender. Steve Martin and Michael Caine play con artists who prey upon rich women’s emotional vulnerabilities, only to discover that they themselves have many of those same vulnerabilities. (It may star two men, but Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has a little bit of a feminist bent too.) There’s potential in seeing that story retold through a new lens. Yet while The Hustle is more overt when it comes to discussing gender, including a monologue about why women are better suited to “the con” than men, it doesn’t really have all that much to say. Not about gender, not about con artistry, and definitely not about how to craft a satisfying studio comedy.
Unlike Ghostbusters, Ocean’s 8, and What Men Want, The Hustle is a full-on remake, not a gender-flipped reimagining. Crass, small-time Australian con-woman Penny Rust (Rebel Wilson) decides to set up shop in the luxurious French Riviera town of Beaumont-sur-Mer, where she ruffles the feathers of high-class con artist Josephine Chesterfield (Anne Hathaway), who’s already got a glamorous arrangement in the area. Josephine initially agrees to mentor Penny, before the two settle on a wager: Whoever is the first to swindle $500,000 from nerdy tech billionaire Thomas (Alex Sharp) will get to claim Beaumont-sur-Mer for herself. The screenplay, credited to several writers, reworks and modernizes some of the elements of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but the basic story beats are nearly identical. That means The Hustle will probably play best for those less familiar with the twists and turns of the source material, as there aren’t too many new surprises.
In his feature directorial debut, The Thick Of It actor turned Veep director Chris Addison struggles to find the heart of the story he’s telling. The film’s brisk 94-minute runtime is welcome; less so an extended montage of Josephine training Penny in the art of knife throwing when that has absolutely no bearing on any of the cons they pull. The Hustle seems very anxious about being funny, often sacrificing logic for easy jokes or whatever will allow Hathaway to vamp it up in increasingly ridiculous accents. Though the performers are game and the costume and production design appropriately stylish, The Hustle plays like a messy first cut of a better, funnier comedy. The highpoint comes early, in a mod-inspired opening title sequence that’s far more fun than the film that follows.
For all its talk of criminal female empowerment, The Hustle isn’t afraid to find flaws in its two female leads, which could be a welcome twist if the film explored it more. Unfortunately, The Hustle underserves the thread of poignancy that sits at the heart of any version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (including a pretty great Broadway musical adaptation from the 2000s). Despite their headbutting, Josephine and Penny are kindred spirits in a con artist life that can get awfully lonely at times. Their begrudging partnership, and their complicated relationship with their kindhearted mark, ultimately hinges on the fact that—as the cliché goes—the real con is the friends they made along the way. Yet The Hustle merely gestures at those emotional beats rather than truly landing them. Isn’t It Romantic demonstrated that Wilson is more than capable of delivering genuine pathos in addition to her signature pratfalls; here, she’s not allowed to shine in the same way.
Despite its glitz and glam, The Hustle is mostly bland and familiar, even if you’ve never seen its predecessor. A good con movie should feel clever in the moment and even more satisfying once all the puzzles pieces snap into place. The Hustle settles for being generally amiable instead, content to offer some chuckles here and there but little in the way of laugh-out-loud comedy or satisfying surprises. To rise above the pack of tepid studio comedies, it needed more, well, hustle.
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“The film’s brisk 94-minute runtime is welcome; less so an extended montage of Josephine training Penny in the art of knife throwing when that has absolutely no bearing on any of the cons they pull”Ah, so the REAL con is that this is not a remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels but a distaff Crocodile Dundee.
“That’s not a twist. THIS… is a twist.”;)
I see you’ve played twisty-spooney before.
As a Gen-X’er, I am tearing up at this reference.
Call that a remake? This is a remake…
Yet while The Hustle is more overt when it comes to discussing genderOne of my main problems with modern movies. Subtlety goes out the window making sure audience and critics know 100% what the themes and ideas behind movies are. This way it couldn’t possibly be misconstrued by the masses.
This is a good point. I liked the acknowledgement in the review that the original film could have a feminist angle (even though the main characters were men, as were the writers and the director). Themes and subtext are there even if they never have a spotlight shone on them.
It’s not really a good point; most mainstream movies have always been unsubtle, and there are plenty of subtle movies today. It’s just unsupportable “good old days” nostalgia.
Fair enough. What I was agreeing with was the idea that subtlety is a good thing, and a lot of movies don’t recognize that. I don’t know whether that’s gotten better or worse.
Actually, it’s gotten worse as you and Durango are right and has been evidenced in how the remakes of Big, Ghostbusters, Oceans 11, What Women Want, etc, etc, flopped with the critics and public as this probably will too. Its become too subtle and on the nose to where it’s more pandering and preachy than telling a good story with said themes. And as Durango correctly pointed out, it gets misconstrued and somewhat off-putting by the masses.
See, the thing is, I don’t agree that subtlety is automatically a good thing. Well, let me back up. “Subtlety” isn’t binary. It’s a continuous range: something can be completely subtle, completely unsubtle, or somewhere inbetween. More subtlety isn’t always better, because it’s possible to be so subtle that nobody even sees what you were trying to say. Something person A thinks is quite subtle might seem blatant to person B, and vice versa.
That aside, not everyone enjoys teasing out subtleties as much as you might. I personally prefer stories that are straightforward with what they’re trying to say, but don’t go to the point of hammering you over the head with it. Stuff that’s really subtle just flies right past me, and there’s nothing I can do about it: I simply don’t notice. It’s part of why I like reading film criticism; critics sometimes will point out things I missed.I loved The Americans but not because of the subtle interpersonal dynamics of the characters, which is something that critics always raved about. I loved it because it was incredibly tense and gripping and I really liked spending time with those characters. The subtle statements about marriages, or whatever, I shrugged at. (I’ve been married 17 years. My marriage does not resemble any of the marriages on the show.)
You mean you never killed the person who both trained your spouse in spycraft and raped them to assert dominance? I guess that’s one of those “non-traditional” marriages I keep hearing about.
No, that part happened before we got married. Totally different.
I’m not sure that’s entirely true. For a long time, most mainstream movies didn’t spotlight their themes the way they currently do. Overt political viewpoints were something studios saw as a liability for most of Hollywood history, at least anything that wasn’t lockstep with the Hayes Code.
Nowadays, often the politics of a film is part of its marketing campaign.
To the degree that that’s true (not that either of us have any data on this, nor would it be particularly easy to quantify whether a movie’s themes are “subtle”), it would imply that the subtlety of the past was due in part to the Hays Code or general squeamishness at broaching certain topics. When you literally aren’t allowed to talk about sex, you have to be subtle because there’s no other options.
No argument that there were definitely cultural and literal rules about discussing certain topics. But I do think Durango had a point when they said that movies have gotten less subtle. I don’t even think its arguable. Movies are generally dumber and more overt about everything than they used to be— you want sophisticated storytelling, you better go watch TV.
Movies are generally dumber and more overt about everything than they used to beOkay. How do you know this?
Sorry, I didn’t know we needed hard data to discuss this.
Its my own observations- and as you say, it’s probably not something tangible enough to provide real “data” for anyways.
I think it has to do with our media and society, which has geared itself much more towards easily digestable viewpoints and information, because people just don’t sit with things for as long. The life cycle of a news story is now measured in hours, not days or weeks. Films stay in theaters for a six weeks, maybe a few months if they have lots of legs. Titanic was in theaters for two YEARS. That disposability, that unwillingness of most audiences to spend much time with a piece of work, can’t help but shape how the biggest films are made. Its a natural result that you get movies like Transformers, which are just big loud and dumb.And its not that that movies haven’t always had some dumb, broad, and
overt films, its just that those are pretty much all that gets released by
studios any more. Studios don’t make those small scale dramas where that
kind of subtle storytelling can be explored. It’s been relegated to the
indie market, and maybe they’ll pick one up to distribute it if it gets
a lot of buzz.Its not that studio movies aren’t capable of being subtle, its just that the vast majority of them aren’t, and the audiences don’t seem to want them to be either.
Sounds like nonsense to me, but it’s a similar argument that’s often made in these various “Movies aren’t as good as they used to be!” arguments. And I think it’s in large part due to the fact that when we compare movies of today against movies from years ago, we pick the movies we remember, which are typically the better ones in a sea of films.
In this particular case, I think the issue is that people who are complaining take issue with the particular themes or issues that are being put front and center, in large part because they’re conditioned to treat the lack of subtlety of the movies they grew up on as the standard.
Scorsese and Spielberg are hardly subtle and never have been. And bear in mind we’re not exactly talking about high art films with something like this, entertainment in much the same way that the hyper-patriotic action movies of the 80s and 90s were.
As I mentioned to dirtside as well, it’s not that Hollywood never made big, dumb movies before. They always have, and probably always will. Broad sells precisely because it targets the widest audience, and therefore will always be profitable.The difference is that nowadays, it’s pretty much the ONLY thing that Hollywood makes. There doesn’t seem to be a market for the small scale, subtle films any more, at least as far as theaters are concerned.
That’s one of the many things that killed The Last Jedi for me. Millennial-splaining sucks the fun out of just about everything.
Reminds me how on SNL or a sitcom whenever there is a celebrity guest star somebody says “Paul Simon!” as if a blind person is listening to it on the radio and needs to follow along. “Hall of Fame curler Gordon Gordonson, what are you doing here!?”
“Just got done hosin’ yer mahm, eh?”This is beating people over the head like that, just with themes.
Oh, subtlety? That died in 2010 when people were all “BUT DID THE TOP FALL OR NOT?” Now everything has to be spoonfed or people revolt.
When will they stop trying to make Rebel a thing. She has no qualities and her movies are shit but they keep trying. Bad enough we adopted James Corden.
those pitch perfect movies made enough bank for there always to be an argument to put her in a movie.
Her character in Bridesmaids was so hideous I now have an involuntary reaction to seeing her face. I know she was supposed to be a bad person, but everything about the performance rubbed me the exact wrong way.
Please answer the most pressing question: How insufferable does Hathaway’s accent get over the course of the movie?
It started the day she was cast.
Unlike Ghostbusters… The Hustle is a full-on remakeI always thought Ghostbusters was a full-on remake. Similar characters, same plot, etc. Having the genders flipped doesn’t change that.
Ghostbusters 2016 has a similar concept of busting ghosts but not the same plot in terms of which ghosts are busted and why, and it’s not just a substitution like Mexican villagers instead of Japanese villagers in a Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai situation. It’s a re-imagining, maybe? As opposed to reboot or remake. It sounds like this hews much closer to the “original” movie.
which ghosts are busted and why Changing the ghost that gets busted doesn’t really change the plot, tho. One movie opens in the college with the librarian ghost while the other opens in the mansion with the old-timey ghost. The Manbusters drop in at the hotel to bust Slimer, while the Ladybusters drop by the concert hall to bust the dragon ghost in their first real job, both having to deal with snooty managers.It is an (almost) beat-for-beat remake, despite changing the shapes of the ghosts and the reasons for busting them.
I’m thinking more of the overall plot, which in 2016 is a big honking metaphor for underappreciated women fighting Toxic Masculinity (the lead dorkus helping to unleash Armageddon is more in line with Peter MacNicol in Ghostbusters II, anyway) while in 1984 it is mostly boiled-down Ackroyd insanity with some Reagan-era big business libertarianism and a side of heteronormativity getting rid of freak androgyny. It’s all angels (ghosts?) dancing on the head of a pin, though.
I’m thinking more of the overall plot, which in 2016 is a big honking metaphor for underappreciated women fighting Toxic MasculinityThe remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Manchurian Candidate both updated their central metaphors, just as the Ghostbusters did. The Communists and the Communist aliens were replaced by what the current fears were at the time, but they kept the plot.Both G-busts have to deal with snooty academics and skeptical bureaucrats who want to shut them down. Both have 3 scientists (and a fourth one) form a business to bust ghosts. Both have trouble paying the bills and have to resort to fast food as the last of the petty cash runs out. Both have to face down a city terrorized by ghosts and a giant ghost trying to destroy them.Films get remade all the time, and there are always changes made, sometimes significantly so. But updating the central metaphor doesn’t necessarily mean that they change the plot, too.
You’re overlooking the larger point, which is that The Manchurian Candidate remake sucked ass.
i mean we’re really splitting hairs here. it definitely does things a lot differently than the original. there are certainly similarities but the plot is not a 1:1 at all.
the plot is not a 1:1 at all Neither is The Magnificent Seven, but it’s still considered a remake.
A least Magnificent Seven made sense, since Americans of the time could understand “Cowboys” way more than “Samurai”.To me things like this and Ghostbusters 2016 would have been much better as continuations, than remakes. It’s not like switching the genders brings any great difference of understanding to the movies.I’d much rather see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels done from Glenne Headly’s perspective or having Hathaway as her daughter, who’s grown up on the con and listening to her mother and Martin/Caine’s stories, and now finds herself in a position to help her own bumbling con artist.
Wait, does this imply they didn’t change the twist ending of the Dirty Rotten Scoundrel’s for this film? As that feels like a weird beat to keep here as it just doesn’t work at all on that level.
It may star two men, but Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has a little bit of a feminist bent tooI have no plans of seeing this, but I always liked Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and thought it had more than just a little bit of a feminist bent. Since this is a remake, I want to avoid discussing spoilers. But wouldn’t a gender swap here make The Hustle less feminist?
But wouldn’t a gender swap here make The Hustle less feminist?
Guess it depends on how they end it. Did they stick to the orignal’s ending or did they come up with something different?
In DRS, a conwoman gets the last laugh over a pair of conmen. I suppose it’s got a feminist bent in that: a woman gets the last laugh, and maybe that a woman is a sympathetic villain. But if you remove Dirty Rotten Scoundrel’s twist ending, is there any feminist bent left to the movie? Ah, but maybe if there had been more feminist bending prior to the end, there wouldn’t have been a twist ending.
Anyways, yes, if you gender swap, then a conman gets the last laugh over a pair of conwomen. There sure seems like less opportunity here for feminist bents. Caroline mentions they don’t hit any meaningful beats in this area. What could they do? I think you just add a twist – that a 3rd conwoman gets the last laugh over a conman who thought he got the last laugh over the two lead conwomen. With a runtime of 90 minutes, I look at the cast list and predict this 3rd conwoman will be the police inspector played by Ingrid Oliver, and her motivations will be jarringly shoe-horned-in to the script at the end.What is somewhat interesting is that both female leads (and my darkhorse 3rd conwoman) are older than the male lead. No respectable older actor would allow himself to be humiliated on screen by women?
Yeah, I had the same thought. It’s kinda like that short-lived Heathers TV show where they flipped the script and the evil Heathers were gay and plus-sized and multi-racial, and the shat-upon murderous protagonists were conventionally attractive, blonde, and straight. My immediate thought was, “Did you really think this all the way through? Like, to the plot point where the pretty white straight people start murdering the evil gays and plus-sized and multi-racial to make their school a better place?”
SPOILERS!!!! for a movie from the 80s: The whole, “the mark was really smarter and better than either of them” twist gets decidedly less feminist when it turns out some dude is a way better and more successful con-artist than either woman.
That’s exactly what my wife and I talked about after seeing the commercial. Seems *less* empowering if you go that route (I mean, not really, but you know).
“The screenplay, credited to several writers …” Three of the four screenplay credits are to the writers of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, two of whom passed away some time ago. Unless the screenplay for The Hustle was written 30 years ago and locked away until now, it would appear that the fourth writer, Jac Schaeffer, would have done most, if not all, of the remaking.
The Broadway musical was fantastic. Deserved to win a dozen Tony awards except it was up against The Producers that year, which pretty much swept them. (Composer/lyricist David Yazbek would finally clean out with The Band’s Visit last year, but for my money Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is the show I’d rather see.)Sad to hear the remake doesn’t live up to its predecessors.
was interested in seeing it because I like them both, until…the cane scene. gosh, so hilarious! (and by hilarious, I mean not hilarious.)I’ll probably get smacked down for this, but hey Hollywood, if you could stop using blindness as a joke that’d be greeeeeat.signed,a blind person
There’s an aging Hollywood executive somewhere who vehemently believes that these things are inherently funny: – Disabilities- Butts- Asians
Whoa whoa whoa, let’s not count out butts.
This explains why Nippled Assters, the porn version of the martial arts classic Crippled Masters, was the biggest box office hit of 1980 (although credit should also be given to the star power of leads Dom DeLuise and Tim Conway).
– Old people rapping (mostly in the 90s)- awkward/cringy moments that go on forever- Yelling is funny! Lots of yelling!
That’s the older executive’s son. He’s the guy who watches an 85-minute rough cut of a comedy and says, “Let’s pad it to 115 minutes by having some white guys riff about porn.”
Butts are funny
1 out of 3 ain’t bad.
His name is “Sid”, and he eats while you are on the phone with him.
Hollywood, if you could stop using blindness as a joke that’d be greeeeeat. Especially since it’s been done once to perfection, back in 1934, in W.C. Fields’ It’s a Gift. Just youtube “Mr. Muckle” and it should probably come up. It’s hilarious. Even to blind people, if only they could see it.
here’s a top blindo secret: most blind people can, because they have at least some functional vision!
Thank you, Jim Knipfel!
I love Jim Knipfel and got diagnosed with the same goddamn thing not long after reading Slackjaw, true story
Just to be clear, I wasn’t calling you Jim Knipfel – I just meant I’d learned that blindo secret from reading him. I love him too, and had the same moment of uncomfortable recognition reading “Leaving the Nairobi Trio” that he described having while watching the Nairobi Trio on television – only there was nobody freaking out next to me and calling me on it. “You! That’s you!” I dressed the same way he described his own dress, shabby trenchcoat and all. And I also thought I looked mysterious and cool. But I really just looked like somebody who was trying hard to look like a shabby alcoholic and didn’t know it.
I honestly did not know that…so there’s a pretty big spectrum between “Legally Blind” and “Total Vision Loss”?
yes! I have pretty good central vision (and am still working), but my peripheral is just about gone…enough to qualify for legal blindness. everyone’s deal is different, though, and I think the definition depends on the state.unfortunately, you’ll never ever see that in movies…the assumption always seems to be that legal blindness = total blindness. which bums me out!thanks for asking. 🙂
And even in that movie, the blind man was just one of several problem customers Fields’ character had to deal with at the same time (e.g., an indignant shopper demanding cumquats, a toddler uncorking barrels of molasses).
I love how Fields is so solicitous of him too – especially how he repeatedly addresses him as “honey”.
I follow an online group elsewhere which is devoted to discussion of 20th century country music, where I found out that it’s HILARIOUS that a big 80’s hit includes the lyrics “There’s somebody here that I can’t see” – because the singer is BLIND! Not just a little ironic in passing, maybe even worth a chuckle if you’d never thought about it – but endlessly hilarious! Why didn’t someone point it out to him!I pointed out that actually blind doesn’t necessarily mean completely sightless, which of course isn’t really the point, but I felt like I had to say something. Fortunately I was immediately rebuffed with “No, he’s completely blind”. Well ok then, point…taken. I mean, if he’s COMPLETELY blind then…I guess?
The Hustle seems very anxious about being funny, often sacrificing logic for easy jokes or whatever will allow Hathaway to vamp it up in increasingly ridiculous accents. That seems a shame, because I bet scenes of Anne Hathaway constantly upping the ridiculousness of her accent would be de-fucking-lightful.
“World-class actor / movie star doing silly accents” was a backbone of studio comedies until the 1980s, and it needs to make a comeback. For one thing, in order to justify those accents the movie needs a plot, which would already place it in the top tier of 21st century studio comedies.
Directed by Chris Addison? But he’s a f***ing knitted scarf that t***. He’s a f***ing balaclava.”
this is too bad – i was looking forward to it. love “dirty rotten.”
I did too – even though I was completely unaware of “The Hustle’s” existence before I saw the trailer, I immediately recognized the source material.
i heard a while ago that a female version was being made but that’s all i knew.
It won’t be a proper remake unless there is mention of a genital cuff.
You could probably re-work that a little to make it work gender-reversed, but I assume they’re going to have to lose one of the best jokes from the original.“What did we do when Uncle Ted was here? No, after that.”
I’m interested to see how they gender-flip the line, “I think my testicles are dropping!”
A somewhat harsher review can be seen at The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/09/the-hustle-review-anne-hathaway-rebel-wilson
I just posted essentially the same thing… teaches me for not reading all of the comments first! Ooops.
But does Rebel Wilson wear an eyepatch and piss herself like Steve Martin did?
Yes, but it wasn’t part of the film.
That was the funniest thing involving Rebel Wilson I’ve ever seen.
Here’s the first sentence from The Guardian’s review: ‘Anne Hathaway detonates a megaton blast of pure unfunniness in this terrifying film.’
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/09/the-hustle-review-anne-hathaway-rebel-wilson
Bradshaw is a master of reviewing awful films…
Seems unnecessarily harsh, especially as I’ve seen Anne Hathaway be funny in other films.
I think it’s the vehicle he’s attacking, not its passengers.
Nah half the review is specifically about her and how awful and unfunny she is
The entire review is in this vein. Did Hathaway sleep with Bradshaw’s wife? Settle down, son.
That first line is somehow the nicest part of the review: If J Robert Oppenheimer had witnessed this, he might have staggered out of the cinema auditorium, subjected the foyer to his stricken thousand-yard stare, and murmured that Hathaway had become Death of Comedy, the destroyer of gags.Trying a little too hard, but still…
That seems like hyperbole but I was pretty surprised how bad her accent was in the trailer. Maybe that’s the joke… but I doubt it.
Oh, thank god… recognitions is here to white-knight Anne Hathaway.
The trailer looks awful.
There will be not a drop of feminism to be found in this piece of shit. This “fatty make funny” garbage is so tied up in body politics- they totally connect Rebel’s character into her economic background and further entangle that with her level of sophistication and implied intelligence. I saw the trailers, she’s the dumb dumb, the fatty-fall over.
Rebel Wilson can seriously go fuck herself. Her paycheck is the money she gets to use to insulate herself from the very stereotypes she’s helping to propagate with this trash- stereotypes that the rest of normies then have to deal with. The kind of dim bulbs who go see this garbage and digest those ideas are the people who then spit them back out as the hate women have to deal with every day online and in person.
I mean, FFS. (And if anyone comes at me with that remake/60s bullshit, I will throat punch you. That is completely irrelevant.)
Came here expecting an F…the trailers are painfully unfunny. Haven’t read an F review in a long time…
Is there a Ruprek the Monkey Girl Scene?
That’s a shame. I like Bedtime Story and absolutely love Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I miss comedies like that, in the sort of Blake Edwards vein. I was hoping this movie would work out in spite of the trailer (I like Rebel Wilson, but she didn’t seem to have the necessary comedic rhythm for the dining car scene, but I would imagine that redoing a Steve Martin bit like that would have to be decidedly different.)
Alright, where’s my gender-swapped Ruthless People remake, Hollywood?
Several studios have tried, but they’ve never been able to cast the female Judge Reinhold role.
Maybe its the too obvious a take, but I feel like the more natural fit for these actors would have been Rebel Wilson playing a posh rich girl conning guys who think they have the upper hand and are taking advantage of her, and Anne Hathaway being the boorish American who’s used her sexuality and looks her whole life for cheap wins, but maybe is starting to feel the pull of competing with younger and younger women for that con and sees an opportunity in Rebel, yada yada yada. (plus that would have better lent itself to the actor’s actual accents)The way this plays just feels like two actors, neither of whom seem to be taking the idea of them being con artists seriously, and just rolling along with their roles simply by the inertia of the existing property.
Can’t wait for the reveal the guy has been conning the two women all along and gets away with it. A beautiful gender reversal indeed.
Look I love Rebel Wilson, will this be worth checking out on Netflix in a year?
Aw man, I really wanted this to be good. Anne Hathaway has proved more than once that she can squeeze a whole lot of comedy from mediocre scripts (looking at you, Ocean’s 8). But I guess it just wasn’t enough to make this one work.
Saw it on Prime – pretty awful. Bad casting as rivals – Hathaway may have worked with someone her age / looks (a Gwyneth Paltrow) or someone younger up also hot (a Margot Robbie). Caine and Martin worked because they were of equal physical appeal. Then, let the mind games begin.So I’m a fatphobe and ableist and Shallow Hall and a white man-splainer, but Rebel’s size is not an attractive option for most people. Little chemistry between Anne and Rebel either.