Review of The Ladykillers (2004) by Bitter E — 27 Jan 2011

A good comedy is funny but a great comedy will be funny while also managing to make some sort of useful social commentary. Most modern comedies fail to even achieve the first and what holds back the Coen Brother's The Ladykillers from the latter category (which many of their other comedies like O, Brother and Lebowski garner) is its desire to occasionally pander to the simple.

A remake of the classic 1955 comedy, this film recounts the misadventures of an assorted consortium of casino robbers including a demolitions expert (J. K. Simmons), an overly educated southern dandy (Tom Hanks), an ex-football player (Ryan Hurst), a Vietcong vet (Tzi Ma), and the black guy played by Marlon Wayans (because there's always one). After a brief introduction of the characters and their quirks (including what I thought was a really funny football helmet scene), the group begins to dig into the casino vault from the basement of an elderly renter, Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall). The big appeal to any movie go-er-as outline by the poster-is the great cast for this film. Any Simmons movie is worth a look if only to catch a ride on the quirkiness of that bald-headed cavalier of quirkdome and Tom Hanks' performance in particular is pretty memorable. Every time I heard his unnatural, punctuated laugh a shiver went straight down my spine and I had to sigh in relief that there was someone more socially antiquated than myself. Wayans is an odd one to call "great", though, simply because of the impossibility of classifying this guy's abilities. Do you judge him for his work in Requiem for a Dream or White Chicks? It's hard to say when he could pop up in either a great movie or an abysmal one but the greater the proximity between him and his brothers the better the movie-unless you count Dungeons and Dragons, which I do. Either way, he needs to hire an agent or stop firing and re-hiring the man based on how Wayan's career jumps between the two extremes. Admittedly, all these characters are essentially fleshed out stereotypes but it's enjoyable to see them bump heads, give noogies, and settle down for a rendition of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven.

On that note, generally speaking the Coen Brothers don't create movies for an audience incapable of understanding where there mother's faces go during a game of peek-a-boo and there are many moments speaking to this regard: the bandits pretending to play chamber music on Baroque period instruments, the sly references to Poe and Faulkner, funny third thing. For me, anybody that doesn't find the whole "I joined the Freedom Riders so you could vote" monologue to be hilarious is dead to me and stop calling me, Craig (you asshole). Overall, the story is involving, the use of cliché is downplayed, and the humor is actually humorous (shocking, I know) from the beginning onwards.

Until...

Until the mentioning of goddamned Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Honestly, when has poop humor of any variety ever improved anything and why are the Coen brothers sinking that low? At first I thought it was just a brief bump in the road we'd quickly get over like a bad singing audition on American Idol but much like Idol I soon realized it wasn't going away any time soon. No it came up again...and again...and again. At this point I looked back and recognized some of the telltale signs of poor man's humor (because as an unemployed man, I only expect the finest things in life) such as the over reliance on physical comedy and the overuse of certain schtick routines. In retrospect, I'm uncertain whether the whole 3rd act was brilliant or a continual rejumping of one very over-exploited shark. The one huge question in my mind-which I felt could and should have been addressed in some manner-is how this crew got together in the first place. Was there a big sale at Al's Home for Stereotypes and All Things Offensive Surplus Store?

Although I like this movie, my recommendation comes with a disclaimer that not everything in this movie is gold or even a nice shimmery copper for that matter. The Coens try to mix high and low brow humor yet those two things rarely if ever fit together well. I know I hate it when some lower-state simpleton sneaks past the maître de and starts snacking down on my chilled duck and caviar appetizer. Not when I saw it first.