- The Ladykillers is an unfortunate coalescence of several of the Coen brothers' worst tendencies into a single unlikable film. It's got funny accents and affected dialects, an idiotic man-child or two, and plenty of pointless violence employed to kill off most of its main characters without a hint of regret. This is the side of the Coens that makes me think of them as naughty children tearing the wings off of flies rather than the sophisticated filmmakers responsible for The Man Who Wasn't There and No Country for Old Men. That The Ladykillers was made in the six years separating those two nearly perfect films is truly baffling.
- The plot is that of a heist film where the criminal mastermind is a Southern gentleman calling himself Professor G.H. Dorr (Tom Hanks). He's presumably not really any kind of professor, but he's undoubtedly a gentleman, except insofar as he intends to steal from the cash room of a local casino. His confederates, acquired through the want ads, include a redoubtable demolitions expert (J.K. Simmons), an inside man with an attitude (Marlon Wayans), the mysterious "General" (Tzi Ma), and a moronic hooligan (Ryan Hurst). Of these, only the explosives man and general are funny, the former for his unfounded "easiest thing in the world" optimism and the latter for his cigarette swallowing and tree climbing prowess. Incidentally, none of these men are musicians, certainly not of the Renaissance or Rococo periods, despite what they've told Mrs. Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall).
- Mrs. Munson, by the way, is one of the film's few truly lovable characters. She's the epitome of great-grandmotherdom, affectionately cross and maybe a little batty, although not as batty as everyone thinks. In fact, she's the only person left by the end of the film who understands what the men practicing music in her basement have really been up to. Naturally, she is also the only person in town who does the right thing, all under the watchful eyes of her late husband's glaring portraiture. But of course the Coen brothers can't let anybody completely off the hook. When Mrs. Munson decides to donate her recent inheritance to Bob Jones University, you can practically hear the brothers snickering at the thought of a kindly old African-American woman giving her money to a school that only recently permitted inter-racial dating on campus. A gag like that should have ended up on The Ladykillers' ever-present garbage scow to be towed away to an island and never seen again. Same goes for the rest of the film.
- This is a remake of the allegedly vastly superior 1955 comedy of the same name.
- Ryan Hurst is the son of the guy who played Cletus in The Dukes of Hazzard.
