The Coen Brothers are usually pretty reliable in bringing interesting material to the screen. The Man Who Wasn’t There, Fargo, Raising Arizona, O, Brother Where Art Thou? and Barton Fink are some of their better outings. The Big Lebowski and, unfortunately, The Ladykillers are among their few misfires.
The Ladykillers concerns Professor G. H. Dorr (Tom Hanks) and his rag-tag ensemble of criminal specialists who plan to rob a riverboat casino of a few million dollars by tunneling through Marva Munson’s (Irma P. Hall) root cellar into the counting room of the casino.
The plan, which is to make it look as if the money has just disappeared from the casino, begins with the professor renting a room from Marva. Marva, a religious old widow with a set routine, must be handled carefully if the plan is to go off without a hitch. The criminals, who include Garth Pancake (J. K. Simmons), a demolitions expert; Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans), the inside man at the casino; and The General (Tzi Ma), a tunneling expert from “French-Indo China” (i.e. Vietnam), are supposed to be musicians in a renaissance troupe although none of them can play a note. They cover the sounds of their tunneling with a boom box that plays Mozart.
The movie wanders from high-concept comedy to low-brow humor virtually with every scene change. It never develops a rhythm because it tries to be odd seemingly for the sake of being odd and not because the Coens wants to tell their story with any conviction. The characters are all caricatures and, while that might be forgivable in a comedy, they’re not people that are easy to sympathize with so what’s the point? We’re given no back-story or information about any of them aside from one establishing scenario as each is introduced.
There are a few funny bits, including a few mishaps involving Mr. Pancake and his irritable bowel syndrome and Professor Dorr’s long-winded explanations of the goings-on, but they’re only enough to keep the movie from being painfully uninteresting.
If this weren’t an update of a 1955 comedy of the same name, starring Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, I’d be concerned that the Coens might be losing their touch. Here, I think, the material restricts them and, while it’s an admirable attempt at an ensemble comedy, it just falls flat.
2.5 out of 5.0 stars
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