"The greatest criminal minds of all time have finally met their match. "

The Ladykillers (2004): 6/10

Poster (c) Touchstone Pictures

O Coen Brothers, Where Art Thou? You leave your partially indie roots to make commercial movies like The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty. Although I don't consider myself to be a huge Coen Bros. fan (the oldest movie of theirs that I have seen is Fargo), I enjoy their movies, and often find their brand of dark humor very funny. However, Cruelty had just one dark moment that had me in stitches, and The Ladykillers doesn't start up with the dark until it's too late.

Tom Hanks is G.H. Dorr, a professor who is like a cross between every stereotyped southern character ever created. He rooms in the house of Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall), supposedly just to room while he's studying, and use her basement to practice Renaissance music with his band. However, the real reason why he needs to be in that house is because it's adjoined to a casino that Dorr and his posse are planning to rob. Munson isn't exactly a milquetoast person, and her strict views damper the successfulness of their mission.

Throughout the first hour and fifteen minutes or so, The Ladykillers seemed to just be generic and bland. A few laughs here and there, but nothing spectacular. It drew on stereotypes of the south and of race, but wasn't really anything amazing. But then the final part of the movie came, which were some of the funniest moments I've witnessed in a movie theater for a long time. THAT'S where it started getting good. The darkness in the Coens's humor came out, and put a whole new perspective on the movie. However, to get there, we needed to go through over an hour of generic movie. Some of that part even seemed like a teen comedy (I'll just say loose bowels and leave it at that).

Although commended for his over-the-top performance, Hanks's character just seemed to bug me. Not only was he hard to understand (actually, almost everyone in the movie was hard to understand), but the way he laughed didn't go with the character, and I don't really think he was right for the role. Hall, however, was good in her over-the-top role. All of the crew involved with the robbery did what they needed to do, but Marlon Wayans's character seemed to belong in a completely different movie. Although occasionally funny, his typical "angry black guy" role just didn't fit in.

Some scenes seemed dragged out, especially in the church, and some meaningless scenes went on for fifteen minutes without even attempting to make us laugh. And that's the point of a comedy, isn't it? The Coen Brothers know how to make comedy. They just need to do it all the way through.

Rated R for language including sexual references.

Review Date: March 28, 2004