Coens’ ‘Ladykillers’ misses the mark
Published 10:39 am Friday, February 29, 2008
The Coen brothers are back, this time unearthing the classic 1950’s British crime farce “The Ladykillers” and reinventing it in their own classic black comedy tradition — an American Gothic tale of crime, avarice and karmic justice.
Tom Hanks steps into his first Joel and Ethan Coen film as the criminally inclined Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr III, an eccentric Southern gentleman who has masterminded the perfect crime: rob a New Orleans riverboat casino by tunneling underground and into the vault where the cash is locked at night. The success of this plan hinges on charming his way in to the home of no-nonsense widow Mrs. Munson (Irma P. Hall), whose root cellar offers the ideal point of entry for excavation — er, practice space for his Renaissance musical ensemble.
The plan is far from foolproof, for the Professor has assembled a motley ship of fools, from a profanity spewing homeboy (Marlon Wayans) and a dumb-as-a-post football player aptly named “Lump” (Ryan Hurst), to a veteran of French Indochina guerrilla tunnel construction known as “The General” (Tzi Ma) and a bumbling explosives specialist with irritable bowel syndrome (J.K. Simmons). A series of setbacks put the cohorts to bickering and backstabbing, and when Mrs. Munson finally discovers their true intentions, they see their only choice is to knock her off. That proves even more formidable than the heist itself.
The original “The Ladykillers,” the 1955 Ealing Studios comedy starring Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, is remembered for its brittle British wit and absurd befuddlements. The Coens go to great pains to recreate certain satirical elements of the earlier film, including the image of the Professor’s silhouette ominously framed in the frosted glass of Mrs. Munson’s front door as the background music rises to melodramatic proportions. That focus on reproducing the mood of the 1955 production, however, takes away from the brothers’ usual attention toward crafting characters of peculiar disposition and depth. This crew of eccentrics and weirdos are caricatures rather than ripened personalities.
The exception to this is Tom Hanks, who initially comes off as a study of Guinness’s professor, right down to the exaggerated dental work. Hanks’ Professor instead develops as a sniveling academic so self-absorbed with visions of grandeur and a fixation on the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe that he fails to see his criminal empire falling apart around him. Ridiculous and hilarious, it effectively steps away from Hanks’ typical nice guy demeanor — and as the highlight of the film, makes “The Ladykillers” worth giving a try.
