X
- 2004
- R
- Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
- 1 h 44 m
- 2004
- R
- Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
- 1 h 44 m
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)
Directed By: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Written By: William Rose, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
- 2004
- R
- Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
- 1 h 44 m
- 2004
- R
- Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
- 1 h 44 m
The Ladykillers
56
6.0
Where to Watch
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)
Directed By: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Written By: William Rose, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 40 Critic Reviews
56
45% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
43% Mixed
17 Reviews
17 Reviews
13% Negative
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 40 Critic Reviews
56
45% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
43% Mixed
17 Reviews
17 Reviews
13% Negative
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
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.
A Southern-style "Ocean's 11" without the pretty boys and Vegas attitude but with plenty of laughs.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 74 User Ratings
6.0
39% Positive
29 Ratings
29 Ratings
50% Mixed
37 Ratings
37 Ratings
11% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 74 User Ratings
6.0
39% Positive
29 Ratings
29 Ratings
50% Mixed
37 Ratings
37 Ratings
11% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
I have no idea why The Ladykillers is so panned. Tom Hanks is phenomenal, as are J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma, and honestly even Marlon Wayans. Featuring many Coen Brothers trademarks, The Ladykillers is a very fun watch that may be a little odd at times and showcases the directorial/writing duo almost trying to outdo themselves on the weirdness scale, but it has a fun engaging cast of characters, is well-written, and has a very compelling narrative. Even better, the lunacy of the film makes it truly hysterical and like I already said, a truly great time. While it does not reach the heights of some other Coen Brothers classics, I do prefer it to some of their more subtle films and though I would not call it their best work, I would hard pressed to call it their worst either. Overall, The Ladykillers is vintage Coen Brothers, even if it received less than stellar reviews.
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The Coen Brothers remake of the classic comedy 'The Ladykillers' is a not-so-bad comedy movie, but even a status like that is low for legendary directors such as Joel and Ethan Coen.
The movie is about Tom Hanks (in an inspired and charismatic performance) attempting to steal some money, but doing it via a house of an old, religious and sometimes hot-tempered woman who offers some slapstick comedy to the film, but at times feels a little too silly for its own good.
There were times where I felt like laughing, and some of the jokes did work on some level, but ultimately, the story was just meh, it didn't add anything memorable and there were times where it tried to be surprising and catch you off **** it ended up just being predictable.
A disappointing step for the Coen brothers and Tom Hanks.
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Good but not great, The Ladykillers is simple, somewhat funny and “nothing more.”
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.
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.
It's as if the brothers admired the Swiss-watch precision of the original and wanted to take it apart to see how the pieces would work in a new setting. As an experiment, it's fascinating. But damn if the fiddling doesn't suck the life out of the laughs.
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.
Ahh, The Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan. The two dudes who masterfully made American cinema more peacefully nostalgic. The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink, and Miller's Crossing and Fargo. The **** so much. I know it's a terrible idea to remake a movie, but somehow I liked the movie. Although the story felt a little fishy, but the cast look great. I thought either Tom Hanks or Marlon Wayans were pretty funny, but Tom Hanks needs a better hard R-rated comedy rather than Joe Versus The Volcano. Not quite as bad as critics think, but still the Coens just made a mistake on choosing this forgotten but somewhat above average film that didn't qualify as a Coen Brothers king of arthouse masterpieces. Worth a rental or watch it on Netflix.
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[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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This movie is notoriously a remake but it's definitely not at the level of the original one and, more in general, it's not a good movie. Anyway only those who dare may make mistakes sometimes and only the great ones dare. And Coen are great directors.
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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.
It wasn’t necessarily a bad idea to try to remake the wry 1955 Ealing comedy, written by William Rose and directed by Alexander Mackendrick, about an odd gang of robbers who hole up in the home of a little old lady while executing their scheme. And there would seem to be plenty of promise in the Coens’ decision to transplant the yarn to small-town Mississippi and turn the lady into a not so little black Baptist widow with a strong nose for immorality.
But after a nifty opening scene in which Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall) marches into the sleepy local police station to complain about the “hippity-hop” music a neighbor is playing on his new blaster, the film’s tone shortly begins to feel off — a sense setting in that, in this instance, the brothers’ stylized dialogue isn’t quite hitting the accustomed high mark.
Introducing himself as a classics professor with expertise in Latin and Ancient Greek, Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, Ph.D. (Hanks), is as eccentric and as highfalutin as his name. Goateed and bedecked with a permanent bow-tie and creamy caped suit that mark him as a man steeped in a distant age, Dorr speaks in an elaborate, rarified, highly literary manner that gives Hanks paragraphs of dialogue to recite and is not unamusing if you follow its circumlocutions carefully.
Dorr takes a room in Marva’s comfortable old house, but spends most of his time in the cellar with an “ensemble” that supposedly specializes in playing “late Renaissance” music. In fact, this is Dorr’s criminal band, and the Coens (Ethan explicitly shares directorial credit with Joel here for the first time) devote considerable attention and invention to providing each member with his own mirthful intro.
Gawain (Marlon Wayans) is the streetwise, vulgarity-spewing “inside man” who takes a janitorial job aboard a floating casino; Pancake (J.K. Simmons) is a hapless technician assigned to setting the explosives for the break-in; Lump (Ryan Hurst) is the inarticulate “muscle” responsible for digging a tunnel from Marva’s basement to the casino office, and the General (Tzi Ma) is a former South Vietnamese officer whose logistical expertise supposedly makes up for his lack of words.
With so much time spent on bringing the characters into the mix and covering the tracks of their project — with time out for visits to Marva’s church for no other reason than to sample the lusty gospel singing — “The Ladykillers” has trouble gathering dramatic momentum, reducing it to the level of a picaresque Southern curio.
Gang’s successful completion of its mission comes at the one-hour mark, and Dorr characteristically celebrates the occasion with his own variation on a famous speech from Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” From then on, however, it’s nothing but trouble for the quintet, as Marva discovers the truth, forcing Dorr, after much verbal tap-dancing, to offer her a full share of the $1.6 million haul. It’s when the righteous Marva refuses the bribe that pic’s title comes into focus, with results that backfire in a manner that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the 49-year-old British gem.
The original was centered upon one of Alec Guinness’ most breathtakingly eccentric performances, one marked physically by the character’s outrageously bad teeth. In a return to comedy after a considerable sabbatical, Hanks comports himself skillfully, obviously relishing Dorr’s distinctive oddities and rhetorical flights, and putting his own trademark on the role with an irrepressible giggle that overcomes him at peak moments of enthusiasm. But like the film itself, the performance doesn’t take off and soar, and there are moments when Dorr’s long-windedness frankly becomes tiresome.
Part of the film’s problem may stem from the characters’ wildly different manners of speech, and from the fact that they simply don’t mesh.
Production values are up to the Coens’ usual impeccable standards. Roger Deakins’ lensing is exquisitely composed and atmospheric, especially in his shots of a statue-laden bridge that comes to play a crucial role in the proceedings. Carter Burwell’s original score takes a back seat to the extensive gospel selections that grace the soundtrack, albeit to less decisive and organic effect than the music selections played in “O Brother.”
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It is sad to see Tom Hanks do that and that and also that, everything in fact.
The Ladykillers
Coen Brothers love comedy. They have easily made almost the same amount of comedy as they have printed dark gritty action drama. And here comes the sad confession. I have never understood their joke. Ergo I could never respond to their comedy drama in their entire filmography. Adapted from William Rose's novel of the same name, the writer and director Joel and Ethan Coen are barely able to draw a nod from us. In fact, I am going to say that they never do. Not for a frame, not for a joke, not for an element and not for a character.
The film is a compilation of dull scenes stitched together and dressed for representing the cartoonish element in their behavior. Oh, the film is also flat emotionally. So there's that to mourn too. I don't even know where to start from. The structure of the script is textbook. In addition to that it is brimming with overstuffed and overstretched cliches. It breathes, nay.. it screams every bit of heist genre as there ever was or is.
Different characters from different ethnicities representing or holding onto a specific set of skills or more precisely filling up the necessary details of the plot. And then comes the plan. The planning of the plan, the execution of the plan and all the things that are obviously to go wrong in that flawed plan. Another disadvantage is empathy in characters. Each character has the tendency to bring humor on the table by praising himself or herself. Now there is nothing wrong with that. It's just that there isn't enough room for the other side of the argument to fill in on the joke, i.e. the characters are left one dimensional and hence impossible to connect with, not to forget the title of this team too, The Ladykillers.
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Awards
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Evening Standard British Film Awards
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Black Reel Awards
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
