The Ladykillers Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)March 29th, 2004
THE LADYKILLERS
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Professor Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr Ph.D. (Tom Hanks) has a plan for robbing the Bandit Queen riverboat casino by tunneling into its offshore, underground accounting offices from the root cellar of the church-going widow Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall, "Bad Company"). Everything goes Dorr's way - Marva has a room to rent, he places an ad and acquires a team of experts and the robbery nets them 1.6 million dollars. But when Marva discovers the gang with the money and insists they give it back, the band of thieves are forced to become "The Ladykillers."
Writer/producer/director/editor team Joel Coen and Ethan Coen ("Intolerable Cruelty") remake the 1955 Ealing Studios classic with a Southern Gothic twist, but while their version features a quirky Hanks performance and some interesting new ideas, overall the effort seems lazy and is short on laughs.
A weird opening title sequence whets the palate for Coen comedy, with its biblical font credits floating above an offshore garbage dump. Mrs. Munson's relationship with the town police is immediately established when she goes to complain about loud hippity hop music (the original's Mrs. Wilberforce is painted as a crackpot - these cops just want to nap their time off). Back at home, Marva tells her husband, Othar (a painting whose expression changes throughout the film), how nice it would be to go to sleep one night and awaken in the heavenly hereafter just as her door is darkened by Dorr. He introduces himself as a Poe enthusiast who performs baroque chamber music, speaking a language almost foreign to a suspicious Marva Munson.
The Coens get sloppy introducing Dorr's eventual team as they plop four seemingly unrelated scenes into the film with no connective narrative. Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans, "Requiem for a Dream") is shown as a janitor, the eventual inside guy. Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons, "Hidalgo"), the explosives expert, is intro'ed screwing up a commercial effect, killing a dog in the process. Suddenly we're inside a football helmet, muscle Lump Hudson's (Ryan Hurst, "We Were Soldiers") clueless point of view on a football field. A donut shop is held up by two gun-waving homeys, undone by the Vietnamese owner (Tzi Ma, "The Quiet American'), a tunneling expert, and his wife. We only learn that Dorr placed an ad later. Had the Coens introduced Dorr's ad earlier, these segments wouldn't land like a bunch of non sequiturs. They also missed a comic opportunity in coming up with a scenario in which Lump would answer an ad. An explanation for Dorr's motivation for thievery is lacking.
What's good about the script is how they work in verbal and visual duality - the anchored Bandit Queen and the moving garbage barge, Gawain being incensed that Pancake would bring his 'bitch' to the pancake house. The thieves' transportation is a hearse, which they load up with the bags of dirt removed from The General's tunnel, like grave diggers. Those bags get disposed of from a bridge onto the barge below, foreshadowing their own fates. Music is also well integrated into the story, with Marva's disdain for hippity hop ('I left my wallet in El Segundo' she harrumphs) making her dislike Gawain and his boombox and Dorr's rococo recordings contrasted with the rousing Gospel music of Marva's church (the choir is led by Rose Stone of "Sly and the Family Stone"). The film doesn't really pick up steam, however, until the lads begin to draw lots to see who will off the landlady, and then the action over accelerates. The final punch line back in the Sheriff's (George Wallace, "Mr. Deeds") office falls flat because the Coens never presented Marva as a fantasist, as Wilberforce was in the original. Marva's cat Pickles gets a cute coda.
Much of the pleasure to be derived from "The Ladykillers" lies in Hanks' odd performance, although even this hangs on gimmickry. He conjures up Dorr as a Poe-obsessed Mark Twain as possessed by Frasier Crane. He swirls long strings of words around his mouth and barks out fussy little laughs with technical aplomb. Irma P. Hall's Marva is mostly a suspicious old lady who gets to deliver the occasionally funny malaprop. Marva's funniest element is her determinedly bow-legged gait. Of Dorr's team, Tzi Ma is the most entertaining, a man of few words who makes every word count and who also enjoys the film's most hilarious demise. His trick curling a lit cigarette in and out of his mouth is one of the movie's funkier character traits, albeit an overused one. Character actor J.K. Simmons, so notable in "Spider-Man" and "Hidalgo," struggles for laughs as the earnest irritable bowel syndrome sufferer whose penchant for 'sending up trial balloons' alienates his colleagues. Wayans makes his twitchiness intermittently entertaining and Hurst is credible as a drooling oaf whose two experiments with thought have 50-50 results. As the casino boss, the comic talents of Coen vet Stephen Root ("Jersey Girl") are wasted and Diane Delano's (the bus driver in "Jeepers Creepers II") turn as Pancake's Mountain Girl is all about costuming. George Anthony Bell ("House Party 2") delivers an amusing definition of 'to smite' mid-sermon and Walter Jordan ("Life") is able to milk laughs as a casino guard who finds everything Gawain says or does funny.
Production designer Dennis Gassner ("O Brother, Where Art Thou?") creates a unique little world of hothouse lush neighborhoods and starkly square public buildings, but his set piece bridge design and its integral horizon are obviously computer created. Art direction by Richard L. Johnson ("O Brother, Where Art Thou?"), set decoration by Nancy Haigh ("Intolerable Cruelty") and Mary Zophres' ("Intolerable Cruelty") costuming are all full of character rich detail, from the weird baroque musical instruments to Dorr's caped trenchcoat.
"The Ladykillers" is an uneven trifle in the Coens' killer oeuvre. It's like Woody Allen's "Small Time Crooks" to his body of work if he'd stop making movies in 1989.
C+
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