Scoundrels Can Be Entertaining

As someone who hasn’t seen a lot of movies made before the year 2000, I ended up really enjoying Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I was skeptical at first with Freddy, played by Steve Martin, as I find a lot of his humor to be extremely cringey and that it evokes second-hand embarrassment. The only other movie I know him from is The Pink Panther, in which he is still incredibly dopey but it was definitely an enjoyable watch as a kid. In this movie the time his cringeyness was at its worst with the Ruprecht scenes, but thankfully Freddy mostly chills out for the rest of the movie (at least relatively). The idea of two con-men competing is entertaining, and the movie does it really well, but I ended up feeling really bad for Janet throughout the movie. This is a little silly since she’s a fictional character, but all the same I hated the idea of her being taken advantage of. Thankfully this was rectified with the reveal that she was out-conning them, which I have to say I actually didn’t expect, though I really appreciated the story going that direction. Also, the entire premise of Freddy acting like an emotionally disabled veteran was great, but then Lawrence intercepting as the doctor was brilliant. And the scene where one of the ladies that Lawrence has swindled interrupts him and Janet, where he then says she was an incurable former patient, was fantastic writing for a comedy. It was a really enjoyable watch that was wittier than I expected it to be.