The Ladykillers

Synopsis

Professor Dorr (Tom Hanks) and his cohorts rent the basement off of an old woman to dig a tunnel and steal a boat's casino money.

What I Thought

Tom Hanks plays a "southern gentleman" complete with bowtie, cane, and accent, who assembles a group of misfits (insert your token stereotyped ethnic cast here) to rob some money. Let me see, wasn't this done before but much less offensively and to much better effect in Ocean's 11? To whit:

The good:

Marlon Wayans is one funny guy.

The bad:

Marlon Wayans is the only funny guy. The rest of the cast ain't.

This IS a Cohen Brothers movie. I don't know if that means anything anymore since each successive movie from these guys gets more watered down and ordinary (my opinion, of course!). Normally, that means you can expect some funny characters and funny situations.

Unfortunately, that's all that there is in this movie (and not much of it at that!), just a few characters without a real cohesive storyline. Sure, the Cohen brothers are known for some funny things, but in this movie they become borderline offensive. The group is a hodgepodge of stereotypes--the black guy isn't just black, he's profanity-laden gansta/hip hop. The Asian guy sports a Hitler mustache, bows and says "so sorry". This all felt less like characters and more like the Cohens were looking for an "insert ethnic thing here" bit.

My final impressions of the movie are mostly bland jokes, a few funny things, and that's it.

Oh the music (southern gospel, of course) was pretty good.

All photos and text copyright Ryszard Kilarski, unless otherwise noted. Clip art, drawings, paintings are either free domain or copyrighted by the artists.