I love the Coen brothers. They are perhaps the best team of producers/writers/directors out there. Not everything they do is gold, but it’s always quality fun. Raising Arizona, for example, is my favorite comedy of all time. I laugh just thinking about that movie.
The Coens have always seemed to defy genre. Or perhaps they blend genres together. What is Fargo, for instance? Do we call it a comedic thriller? Or a thrilling comedy? And don’t ask me about O Brother, Where Art Thou? I have no idea what to do with that gorgeous monstrosity.
On viewing Ladykillers (2004) this weekend, I have now seen every Coen brothers film, and I can now confidently claim that they’re all, well, good. Not much more to say than that. Sadly, Ladykillers is the weakest of them all.
Ladykillers is a comedy wrapped in a heist film, but of course it’s not really a heist film at all, so I don’t consider it a part of that—my favorite—subgenre. It features Tom Hanks leading a group of robbers to the vault of a casino. They pose of Renaissance-era musicians to practice in an old woman’s basement in a small Mississippi town. Sounds like Coen gold, right?
No, not really. I don’t think I laughed at all during the whole movie. We get to watch Tom Hanks stumble over very stilted dialogue (purposeful, of course), but his character is interesting in theory and boring in execution. Not that Hanks doesn’t do a good job, for he is obviously a talented actor. It just isn’t really funny; when a character has a method of speaking that is odd, and he must keep that method up throughout the whole film, it must be continually funny and also completely necessary for that character. When Nicolas Cage does it in Raising Arizona, it works because it’s actually a funny way to go through life and H.I.’s way of speaking incorporates everything about the character. Here, it’s not funny, just odd. And he has to do it throughout the whole film. Sigh.
Ladykillers, is, though, a morality tale in true Coen brothers fashion. Who wins in the end? Well, Bob Jones University for one. You know, the one thirty miles from my home town. The school that didn’t allow black people to attend until the late 1970s, that maintained its “Biblically-based” policy against interracial dating until 2000 when the scandal broke over visits by prospective Republican presidential candidates, that doesn’t allow any kissing or hand-holding or anything else on campus or off, that doesn’t allow dates off or on campus without a chaperone, that doesn’t allow women to wear pants or anyone to wear shorts on campus.
I won’t tell you how this school wins, but the irony is strewn all over the place like Linda Blair’s vomit. I snicker when I think about it, but the movie’s execution of the scenario isn’t funny. Sure, the events are interesting and ironic, but they aren’t funny like I think they’re supposed to be. In fact, I think this film would make a much better hour-long TV episode of The Twilight Zone. As a movie, I’m disappointed.
So come on, Coens, go back to giving us something really good…
Grade for The Ladykillers: 6
1 comment:
I saw both of those films in the theater and haven't seen them since. I was let down by The Big Lebowski, but now everyone I know just raves about that movie, especially after multiple viewings. I need to rewatch it.
The Man Who Wasn't There was awesome. I don't remember it that well but I remember really liking it. What has happened to them since O Brother?
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