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The
Ladykillers:
directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
screenplay
by Joel & Ethan Coen
based on the movie by
William Rose
Man
They Fucked It
Up This Time
by Eric Siegelstein
A
Preface: I’m a huge Coen Bros. fan. Hell, I’d
go so far as to call myself a Coen aficionado. Get me drunk
enough and I’ll recite The Big Lebowski.
And while watching Intolerable Cruelty, I said, “Hey,
even a bad Coens film is better than most of what’s
out there.”
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That said, The Ladykillers
is awful.
What the Coens do best are characters.
People like the Dude, and Jesus Quintana, and Barton Fink
and Charlie Meadows, and Bernie Birnbaum, and Delmar “We
thought you was a toad.” And this movie, sadly, just
ain’t got them.
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At the center
is Tom Hanks, providing his take on what is, essentially, the
same character played by both George Clooney and John Goodman
in O Brother Where Art Thou?. Except for his silly
little giggle, it’s the same fast-talking good ol’
boy. Only with much less to do, and fewer crazy sidekicks and
adversaries.
The adversary, Irma
P. Hall, skirts the cusp of being interesting without ever quite
crossing it. Her tirades against the “hippety-hop”
are funny, but luckily enough all but one have been excerpted
into the ads you’ve already seen, so you’ve all
already judged those for yourselves. |
| And her devotion to Bob Jones University
comes off as throwaway gag, a joke for the fellas what read
the newspapers. Ha-ha, she doesn’t get it’s an historically
racist institution. D’ya get it? And that’s it.
That’s the extent of the joke. In a Coen Bros. picture
just five years ago, this is the kind of little thing that would
have turned into a major plot point, along the lines of Dapper
Dan hair gel, but here it’s just a throwaway. |
| J. K. Simmons plays a pyrotechnician
with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. So at key moments in the plot,
he all of a sudden grimaces and has to run to the bathroom.
It’s almost cute. He’s is the tunnel with a ticking
time bomb – is he going to have to poop? He’s got
to make a quick escape – uh-oh, he’s got to poop!
But the joke never pays off, though. Nothing ever goes awry
because he was in the bathroom. He has a good introduction though,
where he’s fired from the set of a dog food commercial
set in the trenches of the First World War. Best scene of the
movie, and it’s fifteen minutes into the picture. |
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Marlon Wayans is there
as well, representing the hippety-hop nation, and all I can
say is that one day, I’ll write you an essay on the
evolution of the portrayal of black people in Coen Bros. films.
From the bartender in Blood Simple through Bill Cobbs
in Hudsucker to O Brother’s Tommy,
African-Americans play strange and mystical characters in
Coen movies. Except for Marlon. I’ll write you that
essay, but not today – stay tuned.
There’s also a Vietnamese general,
who with his three or four lines is the best character in
the bunch, and an island of garbage that is so visually entrancing
that it’s promptly thrown away like a body in the last
act or a Bob Jones U. joke. |
| Generally, the whole thing is a disappointment
and wasted potential. The Coen brothers have created some of
the best films of the past decade, but this ain’t one
of them. Hell, even Barry Bonds strikes out sometimes. And he’s
got ‘roids! |
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