The film was a success last year, screening at several film festivals, nominated for several awards, including a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actress for Jennifer Lopez.
The film is inspired by a true story, which was published in 2015 by journalist Jessica Pressler. The journalist's character is played in the film by actress Julia Stiles, who is in charge of conducting the interviews with the main actors involved. The journalist also wrote the script.
During the economic crisis of 2008, the nightclubs frequented by men working on Wall Street lost many clients, and the women who work there, who used to earn well, also entered an economic crisis, can no longer follow their lifestyle. A group of these women, led by Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) make a plan to earn a lot of money. They are going to select rich men, to seduce them, drug them and get as much money as they can off their credit cards. The victims won't go to the police, so their families and wives won't find out. The perfect plan to get easy money...
The filmmaker Lorene Scafaria successfully achieves a film with a lot of rhythm and full of fun moments. Although some scenes of the group of girls having fun seem a bit excessive to me, which are the parts that the general public likes the most.
Jennifer Lopez received very good reviews for her performance, she is the star of the film and the hook for it to be a box office success. Men and women wanted to see J. Lo playing the stripper, with sensual dances on the big screen.
Constance Wu, Lorene Scafaria, Vanessa Aspillaga, Trace LysetKeke Palmer, Keke Palmer, Marcy Richardson and Lili Reinhart are some of the other actresses playing the stripper. They had a good relationship and it shows on the screen, doing a good job when they all share scenes.
The interactions of the girls' characters are the ones I liked the most and I found them funny, perhaps, because although it's a film, it faithfully reflects the way these women are in a world full of frivolity. It's a world where what matters is money and all the unnecessary things you can buy. The scenes of wastefulness, you capture the human behavior when it comes to having a lot of money, coming from the easy way.
What I don't like is the manipulation of the film, which sends a message of justification for what the women swindlers did. According to the film, what women did to these men is right, because they were rich men who were bad to women...
To achieve this goal, the male characters who are victims of the swindlers are portrayed in the worst possible way. Bad, macho, perverted men who only see "girls" as sex objects, etc.
In interviews with the media, one of the real girls who is inspired by the film has said that it is good what they did, she even said that she did it because men are bad with women. Taking advantage of the whole Metoo movement to justify their misdeeds
Suppose all the swindlers were as bad as in the movie. Does that justify stealing from them? No. I don't fall for that manipulative game of seeing girls who decided to commit a crime to make a lot of money as heroes.
Because their motivation for drugging the victims and stealing from them was money. They weren't doing it to defend women's rights or anything. All they cared about was the money. They wanted to have a lot of money to spend, to feel good about, to be rich, to live a life of celebrity.
The real case.
The story faithfully shows what really happened, how they chose the potential victims, got him drunk, gave him the drugs in his drink, and then took as much money as possible. The men called the club when they got the card bill, but when they were ripped off by the women, most decided to keep quiet, to keep their wives from finding out.
But everything fell apart when one of the men didn't shut up and decided to report them to the police and file criminal charges against the robbers.
The men were not saints, but neither were they...
A good film from last year, I don't like its message of manipulation, but it achieves the goal of being fun, with a couple of good performances and a story that hooks you to the end.
My Rankin: 3/5
