Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence. (Francois Duhamel/Sony)

Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale, who gained a beer belly for the role) stands before a mirror at New York’s Plaza Hotel, painstakingly fixing his comb over. This opening scene is one of several in American Hustle that recalls director Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, which paid homage to films of the 1970s and 1980s, and at the same time created something original. Director David O. Russell’s film looks the part, its color palette (shot by cinematographer Linus Sandgren) reminiscent of the 1970s Hollywood renaissance when independent-minded directors made exciting, provocative movies fueled with American cynicism. American Hustle finds a lost idealism in those times, but in its quest for sincerity, the movie and most of its characters too often feel like caricatures, their energy pilfered from superior movies you’ve seen before.

In that opening scene, Bale’s comb over tells you all you need to know about the movie. It uses physical details — thinning hair, plunging necklines, and evocative cinematography — to mask a lack of depth.

A title card promises, “Some of this actually happened.” When we meet Irving, he’s getting ready to play his part in the FBI sting operation known as Abscam. Irving and his girlfriend Sydney (Amy Adams) are con artists recruited by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) to use their criminal powers for The Man. The film backtracks to their meet-gross: Bale’s middle-aged American paunch with male-pattern baldness seems no match for Adams, but they have an unlikely shared affection for the music of Duke Ellington, posed as an example of authenticity against manufactured 1970s pop music.

Irving, in a loveless marriage with Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), falls in love with Sydney, and together they hatch a plan to sell art forgeries to rich clients. The feds catch up with the couple and promise to cut them a deal, if they can help catch big game like Camden Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). The friendship between Irving and Carmine Polito is the most interesting relationship in the movie. Mayor Polito is looking for money to help revive the Atlantic City boardwalk and create jobs. Irving needs to take down the Mayor to save himself but he admires the man and his ideals.

Russell has reunited some of his team from his much-loved Silver Linings Playbook, and Bradley Cooper is the most convincing performer here. But Jennifer Lawrence comes off like a trashy cartoon, and DeNiro sleepwalks through a familiar role as, wait for it, a mob guy. Renner does better, as a man conflicted between idealism and corruption. If Amy Adams’s accent slips now and then, it’s the accent of the role she creates as a con artist. You can imagine someone falling for a line from her. You cannot imagine anyone falling for Christian Bale’s grotesque conman.

Themes of idealism and superficiality run throughout the movie, though I am usually sympathetic to meta-roles of actors playing a part of a character playing a part. In a crucial gesture early in the film, DiMaso pushes a briefcase full of money a little too obviously toward his mark. It’s a curious case of the film’s most convincing actor playing the part of someone who’s unconvincing. Like that gesture, the stereotypes of American Hustle are too obvious to convince this moviegoer to buy what they’re selling.

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American Hustle
Directed by David O. Russell
Written by Eric Singer and David O. Russell
With Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner
Rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content, brief violence
Running time 138 minutes
Opens today at a theater near you.