. THE LADYKILLERS
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The Coen Brothers try their hand at
remaking one of the best of the 1950s Alec
Guinness comedies from Ealing Studios. Their
effort just wastes talent on too few new
laughs in a version that has little to offer
anyone who has seen the original. This makes
two mediocre films in a row from the usually
infallible brothers who need to return to
their earlier anarchic wit. Rating: low +1
(-4 to +4) or 5/10
Joel and Ethan Coen have been known for very innovative and
creative films. With THE LADYKILLERS for the first time they are
taking a pre-existing film and remaking it in their own style.
Thus for the first time they are inviting comparison to another
director's work on the same material. In this case it is to
Alexander Mackendrick, who in 1955 made the original THE
LADYKILLERS for Ealing studios. That version starred Alec
Guinness and Herbert Lom, and featured an admittedly under-used
Peter Sellers. Remaking a classic was a bad miscalculation from
the usually intelligent Coen Brothers. Their remake suffers both
by comparison to the original and by comparison to most of their
other films. It simply is not as creative as most Coen Brother
films and it lacks both the subtlety and the large laughs of the
1955 version.
Marva Munson (played by Irma P. Hall) is a black woman in the
South who gets some odd ideas in her head as the local
constabulary can attest. But now something strange really is
happening in her house. Her new tenant, Professor Goldthwait
Higginson Dorr (Tom Hanks doing a Colonel Sanders impression with
an overbite), is not what he seems. Dorr, one of Hanks's first
character roles, claims to be leading a quintet of musicians
playing fine Renaissance devotional music. Actually it is just a
front for the five to tunnel into the vault of a local riverboat
casino and to rob it. Marva does not know what they are doing,
but she has very strong ideas of right and wrong and she is not
going to stand for any wicked shenanigans going on under her roof.
But Professor Dorr has assembled some desperate men including the
General (Tzi Ma), who looks like a North Vietnamese commandant,
Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans), a foul-mouthed hip-hopper, and
would-be explosives expert Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons) who just
can't get anything done right. Their efforts are hamstrung their
own foolishness but even more by Marva's antics. In the earlier
film little Katie Johnson seems too demure and harmless to get in
anybody's way, and that was where the humor came from. Irma
P. Hall is a big forceful woman who does gets angry and violent
and that robs the irony from much of the humor.
The film is at its funniest showing why the thugs turned to crime.
The General shows he is tough foiling a robbery at his doughnut
shop. Pancake is shooting a dog food ad when things go
hilariously wrong. There is a funny bit as Lump (Ryan Hurst)
plays football and we get a Lump's eye view of the action. At
this point the film seems to be working well, but it quickly bogs
down. The Coens got kudos for the use of the music in O BROTHER,
WHERE ART THOU? and they try to repeat the trick by flooding THE
LADYKILLERS with church gospel music. They devote too much of the
film to devotional music. What the film needs is less gospel and
more funny gags. What the story did not need is a slapstick
sequence involving one character flying through the air and it did
not need a portrait that changes expression from scene to scene.
There are simply gags that have been done before and were not
really funny then. It seems the Coen Brothers' famous creativity
is running out of steam.
Hopefully the Coens have learned that they can do better writing
their own material than remaking someone else's. Their remake
seems so much less detailed and textured than the Ealing film, and
far less enjoyable. If they do remake they should choose material
they really can improve upon, instead of just updating. I rate
the remake of THE LADYKILLERS a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or
5/10.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2004 Mark R. Leeper
========== X-RAMR-ID: 37527 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1269839 X-RT-TitleID: 1130976 X-RT-AuthorID: 1309 X-RT-RatingText: 5/10
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