Grounded in caricature and played for loud, unmodulated laughs, the film suffers from the same problems that affected the Coens' other big dud, The Hudsucker Proxy -- namely, little fun and no heartbeat.
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03/25/04
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Ladykillers (2004)
55
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:182
Fresh:100
Rotten:82
Average Rating:6.1/10
Consensus: Hanks' performance in the lead role is inspired, but this is a relatively minor offering from the Coen brothers.
Theatrical Release:Mar 26, 2004 Wide
Box Office: $39,671,084
Synopsis: It is always difficult to try to recreate a classic movie, so Joel and Ethan Coen took the premise of Alexander Mackendrick's beloved 1955 Ealing Studio caper comedy, THE LADYKILLERS, as the basis... [More]
Starring: Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
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Reviews for Ladykillers
The chemistry between Hanks and Hall is the strongest element of the movie. Both are lavishly ornamented characters -- caricatures, really, but not in an off-putting way -- who play marvelously off each other.
03/25/04
In Hanks' ornately, bizarrely funny performance, Dorr is one of the great Coen brothers-created characters, and if the movie he's in isn't as good, it often doesn't matter.
03/25/04
Lacks the subtleties of the 1955 British version but still imaginative with a solid role for Tom Hanks.
03/25/04
It's insulting when such savvy filmmakers expect us to laugh automatically at four-letter words, bathroom humor, and caricatures as crude as they are unoriginal.
03/25/04
The film gets funny reflex laughs as well as a few of the unexpected guffaws that are the Coens' trademark. So go -- but with lowered expectations.
03/25/04
Top CriticIrritating when it should be amusing, dumb when it should be zany, flat when it should be snappy.
03/25/04
When the Coens are at their most creative ... their movies skip nonchalantly over genre lines and become uniquely their own. The Ladykillers is not one of those.
03/25/04
Top CriticHanks traded on his common-man status to reach stardom, but this is the most uncommon acting he's done: He gets deep inside the mind of an eccentric none of us would ever meet in real life and makes us believe in him.
03/25/04
The Coen brothers seem to have relocated to a ZIP code where blander movies are made.
03/25/04
Top CriticAs a Coen brothers movie competing with their own masterpieces, The Ladykillers can only be considered a near-miss.
03/25/04
Already as dark as London soot, the comedy hardly needed work to bring it in line with the Coen brothers' sensibility, but the remake moves to a beat of its own, one unexpectedly in sync with the gospel music dominating its soundtrack.
03/25/04
Only partially satisfying, wait to rent it.
03/25/04
Tom Hanks seizes the chance to play a comic villain with almost indecent vaudevillian glee in this uneven, prankish caper comedy by Joel and Ethan Coen.
03/25/04
Top CriticYou'll have to watch the original film to see it done right.
03/25/04
Top CriticI'm not sure whether it's been so long since Hanks has done comedy that he just seems fantastically funny or whether he really is. But he's clearly enjoying himself, and so are we.
03/25/04
Top CriticThe movie is anything but concise, and Hanks is only fascinating because you can't quite believe he's doing what he's doing.
03/25/04
Top Critic[Hanks] conjures up Dorr as a Poe-obsessed Mark Twain as possessed by Frasier Crane.
03/25/04
Hanks is, as usual, on the top of his game.
03/25/04
They may miss the primary point (and joke) of the original, and they tone down their usual corkscrew dialogue and mordant humor, but they still provide some wicked pleasures.
03/25/04
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