American Hustle

American Hustle was the most recent movie we've seen.  It had a lot going for it.

Great cast - Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner and lots of others, including one big surprise cameo.

Outstanding acting - Particularly by Bale, Adams and Renner

Cool clothes - The movie, set in 1978, luxuriates in velour, leisure suits and dresses that cling.

Remarkable hair - Bale's comb over and Renner's homage to Elvis are Hall of Fame worthy. Adams and Bradley in curlers aren't bad either.

Salute to American technology - The "science oven".

Director with a good track record - David O Russell who directed several movies THC really liked, Flirting With Disaster, Three Kings (one of two pro-neocon movies made by George Clooney - Syriana was the other), The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook.  And, he produced Anchorman!

So what went wrong?  THC wanted to like this movie, based loosely on the Abscam scandal, a lot more than he did.  It wasn't terrible, but it lacked the spark you get when the elements of a movie come together.  The screenplay is uneven, with good scenes and dialogue followed by unneeded scenes and limp dialogue.  You could have cut half of Jennifer Lawrence's scenes and not missed anything but the one scene she has with Amy Adams is terrific. The plot is too convoluted and the movie was at least thirty minutes too long.  This was an attempt to make a wacky offbeat movie but pulling that off requires a delicate balance which did not happen in this film.  If you see it you won't hate it and you'll like parts of it but it should have been much better.