10 Terrible Movies That Tricked You Into Thinking They're Good
9. American Hustle
Hollywood and audiences were basically high on anything David O. Russell had to offer after the Oscar-winning success of David O. Russell, enough that humanity collectively agreed to pretend that his much-anticipated follow-up American Hustle was actually a good, even great movie.
Yet ultimately Russell's adaptation of the FBI Abscam sting operation of the late 1970s and early 1980s felt like an SNL parody of a Scorsese movie - an impossibly pleased-with-itself, star-studded crime comedy that bafflingly nabbed 10 Oscar nominations, yet fittingly won none.
It's a dreadfully inert telling of a fascinating real-life story, which successfully convinced audiences and Oscar voters alike that it's considerably more interesting than it actually is through a smug, slippery script which playfully toyed with notions of truth.
The acting is generally fantastic, for sure, no matter Jennifer Lawrence's flagrant miscasting, but when the effervescence of the performances fizzles away, you're left with an unimaginative sub-Scorsese joint that quite fittingly fell straight into the pop-culture ether as soon as Oscar season passed.