“Ursher, baby,” he says.Īgain, there are layers to this shit. Usher flashes those famous snow-white teeth and looks directly into Lopez’s eyes. Watching it all unfold, the delight comes in waves: It’s Usher! In a movie! Playing himself! In the year 2008! At a strip club! Where he used to go all the time in 2008! But the absolute best moment happens a few minutes into the scene: Lopez’s Ramona, resplendent and glowing, squats down on the stage, leaning toward a visibly horny Usher, who’s just stuffed dollar bills into her G-string and joyfully slapped her ass. A 2008 New York Post article, entitled “Confessions of an Ex-Scores Stripper,” details what his visits were like: “Usher would wander in with a huge entourage, and you’d start to feel like you were in some insane mobster movie, and all the bad things about the place would feel glamorous and cool, rather than sordid and seedy … All the girls lined up in one long row to dance for Usher.” Usher has even sung about his love for strippers - his 2014 hit “I Don’t Mind” is a pseudo-woke ode to his stripper lover, who “works a pole” but “that don’t make a ho.”īy bringing the actual Usher into a faithfully recreated version of 2008, Hustlers pulls a fantastic, meta surprise. If you paid any attention to celebrity gossip in the early aughts, you know that Usher, quite proudly, spent his fair share of time in the strip club. Why?īecause, as Lizzo puts it, “Motherfucking Usher is here. The entire club moves in unison, as if under an extremely sensual spell. “Love in This Club” begins to blare from the speakers. Every dancer - Cardi B, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, Jacq the Stripper, Trace Lysette - halts mid-grooming and rushes the stage, grinding up on each other, ecstatic. Lizzo, breathless, races into the dressing room, nipple tape shimmering beneath her purple mesh dress, and begins to scream. Ramona, Destiny, and their fellow strippers are at the club, getting ready backstage, when suddenly, time slows down. Constance Wu, as Ramona’s mentee, Destiny, hangs out at home in a bra with clear straps, navy platform flip-flops, a denim miniskirt, and a pink tube top that reads “Fuck it up, buttercup.” Tiny vests are worn over ripped T-shirts feather earrings complement shredded, low-cut jeans.īut the most incredible 2008 simulacrum happens about halfway through the movie. Lopez, as the scheming stripper-in-charge, Ramona, struts down the street in a Juicy suit and shiny brown lip gloss. For at least 45 straight minutes, I cringed in horrified recognition. In the first half of the film, director Lorene Scafaria carefully recreates the year 2008, that last vestige of cartoonish American excess, to stunning and extremely embarrassing results. But above all else, it’s a painstakingly detailed historical-period drama. Hustlers, based on the true story of a group of strippers who shook down hundreds of Wall Street bros for access to their bank accounts, is a lot of things all at once: It’s a dark, late-capitalist fable an examination of gender politics and self-worth in the early aughts a pitch-black comedy a study in moral relativism and latent misogyny a paean to misunderstood sex workers a long-overdue Jennifer Lopez showcase. The most incredible 2008 simulacrum happens about halfway through the movie.
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