The Ladykillers Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)March 30th, 2004
IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
THE LADYKILLERS
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
R, 104 minutes
An indication that the Coen Brothers may have had some inkling as to the sorry state of their The Ladykillers remake is the time they lavish on the gospel renderings of a Mississippi Southern Baptist church choir. The choir has little or nothing to do with the movie. But the Coens, as if reluctant to leave that safe haven for the lead-footed territory of the rest of their comic caper, stay in church and revel in the soul-stirring sounds of gospel hymns. The choir director looks like a young Little Richard, and the camera gathers him in with an enthusiasm that makes you think he is going to figure in the plot. He doesn't.
The Coens show good taste in the material they've chosen for their first remake (and their first co-directing credit). The original The Ladykillers was directed in 1955 by Alexander MacKendrick (who would go on shortly to shoot Sweet Smell of Success), and starred Alec Guinness as Professor Marcus, with sublime help from a supporting cast that included Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom (who would team up later in the classic Pink Panther movies), and Katie Johnson as the imperturbable Mrs. Wilberforce. The plot had to do with a gang of criminals, headed by Guinness's character, who rent a room from a little old lady. They pass themselves off as a chamber music group, and they play recordings behind the closed door for the benefit of Mrs. Wilberforce while they plot a heist.
The Coens' good taste extends to the casting of Tom Hanks in the Guinness role of the criminal mastermind behind the caper. The triple-Oscar-winning Hanks's homage to Guinness extends to the prosthetic teeth he wears, as he sputters and cackles and croons his way through his rendition of a honey-mouthed charlatan named Professor G. H. Dorr. But as good as Hanks is, his performance reminds us what a genius the late Sir Alec was. Alan Arkin recently observed that the best reviews he's gotten in years were for last year's remake of his 1979 comedy The In-Laws, when critics reached back to praise the original in slamming the pretender. It is dangerous work to walk in the footsteps of a classic. Hanks is good, but he's no Guinness, and the comparison is not kind to him. He'll do well to go back to doing originals, and so will the Coen Brothers.
The movie labors through its opening section as it identifies the individual losers who will turn up as the members of the Professor's gang. There are some good gags and a few laughs in this section, although the part dealing with the dumb football player, Lump (Ryan Hurst) is about as funny as the K section of the Yellow Pages. The others are the General (Tzi Ma), a hard-eyed heavy who could be a former South Vietnamese military officer; Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans), a riverboat casino janitor who hauls the movie into its R rating single-handedly with his witless scatological language; and Garth Pancake (J. K. Simmons), a phlegmatic techie who came South in the Sixties as a Freedom Rider. They all come together, we're told, when they answer a classified ad the Professor has placed in the local newspaper. What could the ad have possibly said? And how on earth did the practically brain-dead Lump ever happen to pick up a newspaper, let along sound out the words in the ad?
Joel Coen's screenplay, adapted from the brilliant William Rose (The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming) original, conceives as one of its central gags that Hanks's Professor will speak in a tortured, exaggeratedly pretentious syntax, thickened with a syrupy southern drawl. It doesn't take long for that joke to wear out its welcome, and poor Hanks is stuck with it for the next hour and a half.
The best thing in the movie is the character of the little old lady, or in this case the substantial old lady, Marva Munson, as portrayed by the wonderful Irma P. Hall (Soul Food). She is about as far from Katie Johnson's Mrs. Wilberforce as she could possibly be, and that works to her and the movie's advantage. She's a Bible-toting Baptist, which serves the purpose of getting us our welcome furloughs with the church choir. And like her Fifties counterpart, she's not the chump the crooks take her for. As she becomes aware of what her boarder is up to, the dynamics of the situation shift, and the story earns its title.
For the most part, this movie limps along through oases of inspired gags and arid deserts of ill-conceived duds. A running joke is a character who suffers from IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). The Coens like this diarrhea humor so much they bring it back for a curtain call. There's precious little chemistry among the gang members, and not much to establish them as a team. If the characters were hilarious, you wouldn't harp on the logic; but as it is, after Hall and Hanks, the next best performance comes from an oil portrait of Marva's dead husband Othar that hangs over the mantel.
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