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THE LADYKILLERS Send This Review to a Friend
There is usually little artistic reason to remake a fondly remembered film, and the new version of "The Ladykillers" shows why, even when the filmmakers are the esteemed Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan. The old film, released in 1955 and starring Alec Guinness, was marked by the sort of whimsy one associates with the delightful British comedies of that era emanating from the Ealing Studios. Transferring the setting to the American south, the Coens dropped the whimsy for the more blatantly macabre with a dash of vulgarity. The result is heavy-handed even though there are more than a few laughs.
This being the work of the Coen brothers, it has some funny bits, including a hilarious finale involving a cat. But "The Ladykillers" never catches fire the way a good comedy should.
Tom Hanks, with a Vandyke and a studied Southern accent, has a role loaded with ham but beneath his talent, that of Professor G. H. Dorr, a charlatan and thief who leads a gang attempting to rob the stash of a casino. He has a crew of misfits, played by Marlon Wayans, J. K. Simons, Tzi Ma and Ryan Hurst. The phony professor cons an African-American landlady into renting him and his cohorts space on the assumption they are a chamber music group. From there they can blast their way to the loot.
The central gag is that the landlady, Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall), is more than a match for Dorr and company. She's a righteous woman who makes small contributions to Bob Jones University, a not-so-subtle gag, as the Bob Jones school has been accused of racial discrimination. Marva, overweight and lumbering, soon becomes suspicious of her tenants. She is watched over by an imposing, hanging portrait of her late husband. Hall steals what there is of the film to steal in a performance that is funny although caricatured.
The crooks plot to kill her, but you can suspect that there's no way for them to succeed and that, more than likely, she'll be the one who winds up with the money. Her character outshines that of the professor. The British version also starred Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom and Katie Johnson as the landlady. Under the direction of Alexander MacKendrick, it had class.
In the remake by the Coens, there isn't class, only heavy-going with some inevitable laughs as a result of the gallows humor and broad performances. A Touchstone Pictures release.
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