The Ladykillers

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.

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.

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.

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.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

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.

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.