Review of American Hustle (2013) by Drahgoscribe — 08 Feb 2014

I can't help but see this as the most overrated film of 2013. The acting, cinematography, and soundtrack is good...but the script is not even half as clever as it thinks it is, the plot is so scattered it feels like a schizophrenic leprechaun on LSD wrote it, and director David O.

Russel just seems so lost in his own recent success that he feels like he can push all of the boundaries he wants and get applauded for it. Sadly that last part seems basically true. I'm all for movies that break traditional molds and delve deep into the bizarre and contradictory rawness of human thoughts and emotions, but this just made me feel sick and confused.

There is no structure at all, while this is clearly intentional, it doesn't work for me. Plus the movie isn't funny enough to be a comedy, it isn't engaging enough to be a romance, and it isn't interesting enough to be a drama, leaving it stuck in some sort of genre-limbo.

That isn't even touching on the extreme overuse of narration to explain the characters feelings, the fact that the actual problem of the movie is completely ambiguous until the end of the second act, and the absence any real protagonist to care about or find fascinating.