The Ladykillers Review
by Mark R. Leeper (markrleeper AT yahoo DOT com)April 7th, 2004
THE LADYKILLERS
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The Coen Brothers try their hand at
remaking one of the best of the 1950s Alec
Guinness comedies from Ealing Studios. Their
effort just wastes talent on too few new
laughs in a version that has little to offer
anyone who has seen the original. This makes
two mediocre films in a row from the usually
infallible brothers who need to return to
their earlier anarchic wit. Rating: low +1
(-4 to +4) or 5/10
Joel and Ethan Coen have been known for very innovative and creative films. With THE LADYKILLERS for the first time they are taking a pre-existing film and remaking it in their own style. Thus for the first time they are inviting comparison to another director's work on the same material. In this case it is to Alexander Mackendrick, who in 1955 made the original THE LADYKILLERS for Ealing studios. That version starred Alec Guinness and Herbert Lom, and featured an admittedly under-used Peter Sellers. Remaking a classic was a bad miscalculation from the usually intelligent Coen Brothers. Their remake suffers both by comparison to the original and by comparison to most of their other films. It simply is not as creative as most Coen Brother films and it lacks both the subtlety and the large laughs of the 1955 version.
Marva Munson (played by Irma P. Hall) is a black woman in the South who gets some odd ideas in her head as the local constabulary can attest. But now something strange really is happening in her house. Her new tenant, Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr (Tom Hanks doing a Colonel Sanders impression with an overbite), is not what he seems. Dorr, one of Hanks's first character roles, claims to be leading a quintet of musicians playing fine Renaissance devotional music. Actually it is just a front for the five to tunnel into the vault of a local riverboat casino and to rob it. Marva does not know what they are doing, but she has very strong ideas of right and wrong and she is not going to stand for any wicked shenanigans going on under her roof. But Professor Dorr has assembled some desperate men including the General (Tzi Ma), who looks like a North Vietnamese commandant, Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans), a foul-mouthed hip-hopper, and would-be explosives expert Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons) who just can't get anything done right. Their efforts are hamstrung their own foolishness but even more by Marva's antics. In the earlier film little Katie Johnson seems too demure and harmless to get in anybody's way, and that was where the humor came from. Irma P. Hall is a big forceful woman who does gets angry and violent and that robs the irony from much of the humor.
The film is at its funniest showing why the thugs turned to crime. The General shows he is tough foiling a robbery at his doughnut shop. Pancake is shooting a dog food ad when things go hilariously wrong. There is a funny bit as Lump (Ryan Hurst) plays football and we get a Lump's eye view of the action. At this point the film seems to be working well, but it quickly bogs down. The Coens got kudos for the use of the music in O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? and they try to repeat the trick by flooding THE LADYKILLERS with church gospel music. They devote too much of the film to devotional music. What the film needs is less gospel and more funny gags. What the story did not need is a slapstick sequence involving one character flying through the air and it did not need a portrait that changes expression from scene to scene. There are simply gags that have been done before and were not really funny then. It seems the Coen Brothers' famous creativity is running out of steam.
Hopefully the Coens have learned that they can do better writing their own material than remaking someone else's. Their remake seems so much less detailed and textured than the Ealing film, and far less enjoyable. If they do remake they should choose material they really can improve upon, instead of just updating. I rate the remake of THE LADYKILLERS a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.
Mark R. Leeper
[email protected]
Copyright 2004 Mark R. Leeper
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
