Over-hyped, barely worth 3 stars for the cast, 1 for art direction

Rating: 4/10 (16 February 2014)

Quite frankly ranking this movie 4 stars is more than it's worth yet. I saw it coming, but couldn't believe my eyes as the whole story sluggishly and self-indulgently unfolded. It was a long time since I last wanted to walk out in the middle of a viewing.
First there was this selling point of a "cool", "groovy" piece of film-making. Tarantino is very good at this but even for him it is a fine line between cool and wink-wink jokes and references - and self-references. On the cool side David O. Russell's Three Kings was really overrated yet. Also, 'cool' is mostly about dumb poor vocabulary.
And then how can you make a 'cool movie' that lasts well over 2h? A Scorsese fresco (Taxi Driver, Ragging Bull, Godfellas and Casino) is not an achievement for your average director who thinks he's smart because he's hot on the market. American Hustle tries to dilute its over-long script with a mild teasing+flashback right from the start. But when the flashback gets started you begin to think - rings a bell, a good director, with a fine editor, keeps the audience from thinking: "OMG! they are going all the way back to how everybody met (including some remembrance of Irving's youth...)!" Then the story drags and drags along every detail of a pretty simple plot, boring us stiff with the zoo of its characters. Sure this was a great cast but only the focus on Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) is consistently deep to keep you rooting for her. Most of the rest is about flashy caricatures. Christian Bale cannot play emotions, as usual (the actor's studio caricature) but it's in line with his character, a character that would only work as a funny obnoxious a**hole.
So it all comes down to this: is it a comedy? Not really. A thriller? Certainly not. Ensemble cast for a period piece? Sometimes. A satire? Of what? A nostalgia postcard? Nope.
American Hustle is a typical case of a director pretty full of himself, who fall in love with his story and wanted to show us all his "brilliant" ideas instead of constantly challenging them to know which kind of movie he was making.