Anne Hathaway Has Always Been Funny – ‘Ocean’s 8’ Just Cashed In On It

In the days following the release of Ocean’s 8, I’ve seen people write about how Anne Hathaway steals the show, is “marvelous” in it, and “reminds you, in case you forgot, that she is a mother*cking STAR.” I’ve read the tweets praising her quirky comic timing, and they all read like some people have awoken from some enchanted sleep that forced them to forget that Anne Hathaway is good, and light, and lovely, and tremendous in everything she does. More than anything else, there seems to be some sort of collective shock over the fact that Anne Hathaway is hilarious.

To which I have to say, “No shit. Of course she is.”

For most of my adult life, I’ve been an Anne Hathaway fan, and I have to say it’s surprisingly hard out here for people who likes earnest performers who give every role their absolute best. We’ve all heard of the “Hathahate,” and I have been railing against it for years. I get it. She’s too nice, too ardent, too uncool. But what Hathaway may lack in hipster credibility, she more than makes up for in her determination to deliver the goods. When you see an Anne Hathaway performance, be it a romance, indie film, big budget action film, or balls out comedy, you’re going to see someone who is trying their best to do a good job. Oftentimes this culminates in something magical, like in Rachel Getting Married, Colossal, or Les Miserables, but it’s a whole different story when we talk about balls out comedy.

Anne Hathaway was born to be a slapstick comedy goddess. You only have to look at her early work ��� much of it in bright, zany, delectable truffles of rom com bliss — to see a shadow of Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby or Lombard in My Man Godfrey skittering across the scene again. Hathaway’s big break came in a sweet, endlessly rewatchable Disney film called The Princess Diaries. She played a shy, happily self-deprecating girl who discovers that she is actually a princess of a small, fictitious European country that claims pears as its main export. I caught the film on television just a few weeks ago, and Hathaway’s ability to zip from high comedy to the all-too-familiar dregs of teenaged ennui is remarkable. More remarkable, though, is that Hathaway herself was a teenager when the film was shot, and it was her film debut.

Nevertheless, it proved she could sell a comedy. And a few years later, Disney brought her back for the more romantically tilted sequel, where she spars with a young Chris Pine and topples into a fountain, silly-style.

When you watch Hathaway in these films, or how she vamps ever so perfectly on Saturday Night Live, or happily bursts into song, or is always ready to make the perfectly scathing joke at her own expense, what you see is an actress trapped in the wrong generation. She has more in common with the musical comedy vixens of Old Hollywood than the indie queens who rule Sundance and Cannes. It’s not a matter of talent, but energy. Hathaway’s attention to detail and effervescence is something you’d find on an old school lot. Sadly, Hathaway has barely been able to stretch this comedy muscles. In the last decade, the romantic comedy has gone decidedly out of vogue, and that should have been Hathaway’s genre to own. Whenever she’s dabbled in comedy in the past, we can see the inkling of a hilarious powerhouse winking through.

Which leads me back to my first point: Anne Hathaway has always been funny. She doesn’t just have an innate sense of comic timing, but an eagerness to play. Yes, it’s the very attribute that has caused her such stress — her exuberant willingness to try — that makes her such a great comic figure. It’s great that Ocean’s 8 audiences are recognizing Hathaway’s charms, but they should have done so years ago.