The Ladykillers
The Ladykillers Image
Metascore
56

Mixed or average reviews - based on 40 Critics What's this?

User Score
5.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 68 Ratings

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  • Starring: , ,
  • Summary: This retelling of the critically acclaimed 1955 comedy stars Hanks as Goldthwait Higginson Dorr III, Ph.D., a charlatan professor who's assembled a gang of "experts" for the heist of the century. (Touchstone Pictures)

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 40
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 40
  3. Negative: 5 out of 40
  1. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: M. E. Russell
    91
    For a certain brand of film geek, the best news about The Ladykillers is that it isn't a Tom Hanks movie. It's a Coen brothers movie.
  2. Slate
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    80
    The mixture of cartoony stylization and regional realism is completely original--and a testament to the genius eye for color of the great cinematographer Roger Deakins and the designer Dennis Gassner.
  3. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    75
    The new version of The Ladykillers is like an able forger's copy of a masterpiece. The brushstrokes are broader, the colors are a little less subtle, and one or two portions of the canvas were finished in a hurry. But it's well worth a look if you're passing by.
  4. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: John Powers
    60
    It's the disease of Hollywood remakes that they nearly always lose sight of what made the original good in the first place. Where Alexander Mackendrick's film offered a delicately diabolical blend of the ordinary and the brutal -- the new Ladykillers bludgeons you with cartoonish gags about stupid football players, irritable-bowel syndrome and somebody accidentally shooting himself in the head.
  5. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    50
    You have to look at the earlier film to understand where the Coen brothers went wrong - terribly, noisily, annoyingly wrong. They've made a broad comedy out of a black comedy and completely lost its charm in the process.
  6. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    50
    The souffle falls a little flat in The Ladykillers, a Coen brothers black comedy in which the humor seems arch and narrative momentum doesn't kick in until the final third.
  7. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    25
    Not only have they (Coen Brothers) stripped it of all its wit and charm, they've loaded it down with the kind of race-baiting and bathroom humor they've always avoided in the past.

See all 40 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 39
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 39
  3. Negative: 17 out of 39
  1. TonyB.
    Oct 19, 2005
    5
    Not one of Tom Hanks' best efforts, it does provide some pleasantries, not the least of which is the wonderful Irma P. Hall.

See all 39 User Reviews

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