10 Recent Movies That Were HUGE Ripoffs
7. Pain Hustlers
Netflix's Pain Hustlers was a wholly transparent attempt to give the opioid epidemic The Wolf of Wall Street/The Big Short treatment - that is, chronicle the debacle in a slick, irreverent, and informative manner, ensuring that a wider audience becomes educated on a subject they might otherwise ignore.
Yet Harry Potter director David Yates is no Martin Scorsese or Adam McKay, and his attempts to spin the fascinating focal story into a mile-a-minute examination of excess and greed end up feeling like a filmmaker trying too hard to ape the aforementioned films.
One critic even tellingly dubbed it "The Wolf of Walgreens."
The flashy editing, faux-witty dialogue, and self-conscious performances make Pain Hustlers feel more like a Saturday Night Live parody of a prestige dramedy rather than an earnest attempt at one.
Emily Blunt certainly tries her damnedest here, but this is painfully beige fare that feels wildly inferior to its obvious inspirations.