A movie that would make anyone wish they were as drunk and high as the characters on the screen.
When the announcement of this summer’s upcoming Ocean’s 8 (the female counterpart to the George Clooney/Brad Pitt franchise) was unleashed, I thought it was one of the worst and most desperate ideas for a movie that had come out in quite some time. My doubts were promptly squashed in two ways: a) with the release of the film’s two dynamic trailers and b) with one viewing of the newly-released and utterly abysmal The Con is On! While both the movie’s trailer and premise of The Con is On! have all the makings of a sexy crime comedy caper in the tradition of Charade and How to Steal a Million, the whole affair is plagued with one giant misstep after another from the casting to the writing. Even the much-maligned Mortdecai, with all its obvious problems, managed to at least hit a couple of targets which The Con is On! fails to even acknowledge as it quickly becomes one of the worst movies of the year.
In The Con is On! Uma Thurman and Tim Roth play Harriet and Peter, a British boozing, pill popping husband and wife team who keep themselves pampered, drunk, and high through one lucky con after another. When they end up stealing from the dangerous Irina (Maggie Q), the pair head to Los Angeles and seek the help of fellow con-man Sidney (Stephen Fry). But the pair needs cash fast, leading them to hatch a plan to rob Peter’s ex-wife Jackie (Alice Eve), a flaky celebrity married to an even flakier filmmaker (Crispin Glover) who’s engaged in an affair with his leading lady Vivian (Sofia Vergara) and his wife’s personal assistant Gina (Parker Posey). While the scheming pair have their hands full trying to boost a priceless ring from Jackie’s possession, things get even worse for Harriet and Peter when Irina tracks them down.
Although it really shouldn’t matter given the limited budget the filmmakers had to work with, one still can’t help but shake their head at just how cheap of a production The Con is On! is. In fact, the level of shoddiness among most of the production values is astounding regardless of the film’s modest price tag. The worst of these is the pathetic way the film tries to pass London off as Los Angeles with a number of process shots popping up whenever characters are behind the wheel of a car, as well as a sloppy mixing of Los Angeles exteriors with London interiors employed in the hopes of trying to fool the audience. Eventually, the minds behind the scenes stop trying altogether, letting their movie fall prey to horrible looping, a lack of subtitles, having Posey don a fanny pack with an American flag on it for the majority of her scenes and having a major sequence take place against the backdrop of an awards ceremony literally just titled “Awards.”
As The Con is On! goes on, it eventually journeys into the nonsensical with very little making sense. The biggest reason for this is the movie’s hugely flawed patchwork script, which tries way too hard to cover up its half-baked plot and cardboard characters. Most of the time, the filmmakers depend on the screenplay’s many lines (which oftentimes border between lame and coarse) to make up for the movie’s shortcomings. “I’ve just been accosted by a tanning booth,” Peter says to Harriet after being hit on by a tanned L.A. woman. At some point it becomes recognizable that the film thought it was being bold with every f-bomb it dropped, such as Harriet casually telling Sidney, “Take me somewhere; I want to get f**ked up.” Yet the movie over-indulges in this method quick. When Vergara’s first words in the film are literally “F**k me,” any chance for true boundary-pushing comedy dies. Besides the script, there’s more to abhor about The Con is On! than praise, including a creepy moment featuring Fry telling his Asian houseboy that he intends to take him to Disneyland when the proceedings have ended, a handful of homophobic jabs, and a shameful bit of racist humor when Harriet actually mistakes Jackie’s maid for the family dog. Speaking of the dog, ANY scene involving the small canine only serves to plunge The Con is On! further into the abyss of ridiculousness. The most eye-rolling of these is when Harriet, somehow managing to pass herself off as a dog whisperer, tells Jackie about the beloved pet. “She says she’s never heard of you,” says Harriet, causing the insulted owner to exclaim, “That bitch!”
Never has a movie been so off when it comes to casting. The Con is On! proves to be so horribly miscast at every turn, the fact that anyone is able to turn in anything close to resembling a performance is a miracle. As for the two leads tasked with carrying this turkey, Thurman has never been more out of her depth, while Roth seems as bored and annoyed as his character throughout the whole movie. It’s not as if their fellow cast members offer much help. The typically dependable Posey comes across as slightly surreal, the always offbeat Glover is at his worst (ironic, considering he’s portraying someone relatively normal for once), Q is as bland as her character, Fry does Fry, and Vergara’s charm is all but lost on the soulless woman she’s playing. Only Eve as the eternally self-absorbed and perpetually clueless Jackie manages to squeeze a minuscule amount of fun out the mess.
Several years ago, I recall watching an L.A.- set documentary featuring Mel B (aka Scary Spice) describing her life after having relocated from London to Los Angeles. The cameras followed the singer as she went about her new life in the city of angels and how she had fully come to appreciate her adopted home in a city she was more than eager to explore. During the documentary she mentioned how her immediate circle of friends included a number of British ex-pats such as her who were part of a large circle of English folk now residing in Los Angeles. The comment spoke to the beauty of America and how groups of all cultures were able to come over and form their own communities which tied them to their homeland, yet at the same time, allowed them to embrace America. In today’s world where such a reality is becoming more and more difficult for such individuals to achieve, The Con is On! Does nothing to help make it any easier.
