When walking into a Coen brothers film, an unassuming moviegoer expects a comedy that looked "a little strange" in the trailers but could make a pleasant Friday night diversion. Coen brothers cultists, meanwhile, anticipate their films with a geeky fervor spawned by countless "Fargo" and "Big Lebowski" viewings.
Auteurists rank them with Woody Allen, Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese as American directors with singular bodies of work — like Allen, however, the Coens are treading artistic water. After last fall's mediocre "Intolerable Cruelty," a once-unthinkable concern reared itself: Would their latest even be a good movie, let alone one that could touch the heels of their best work?
"The Ladykillers," a remake of a 1955 British caper comedy, answers that question with an indifferent shrug. The brothers clearly recognized the inconsequence of their latest project, which is as much of a lark as "Cruelty," though a far more enjoyable one. In the new version of the film, the Coens transplanted the setting from a dowdy London locale to rural Mississippi and refashioned every character save for the lead: criminal mastermind Professor Goldthwait Higgenson Dorr (Tom Hanks, in a role originally played by Alec Guinness).
A verbose, erudite Southern-fried gentleman with a penchant for three-piece suits and reciting Edgar Allen Poe, Dorr finds lodging in the house of Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall), a devout black mama whose root cellar has a tunneling route to a casino boat's vault.
Except for a couple of unintentional explosions and some bickering, the ruse works until Marva grows suspicious, after which the only option to "decomplicate" the situation is assassinating the religiously-deluded elderly woman.
Dorr and his disparate coterie are quirky additions to the Coen canon, although Gawain (Marlon Wayans) and the doltish "Lump" (Ryan Hurst) are atypically generic characters for them. Other conspirators include "The General" (Tzi Ma), a taciturn Chinese ex-military man with dubious Buddhist beliefs, and Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons), a former civil rights advocate-turned-munitions-expert who lectures Gawain about what he did for "his people" in the '60s.
Dorr's intellect anchors the volatile group, providing delightfully convoluted one-liners and inventive characterization. Hanks relishes the chance to break free of his Oscar pedigree: Playing his first purely comedic role in years, his work is a joy to behold and instantly memorable. The actor mines every syllable, drawl and facial expression for comedic potential while stepping aside (sometimes literally) to let his fellow cast members shine.
It's a shame, however, that the Coens couldn't resist the urge to streamline their artistic instincts. They now often rely on obvious or cheap laughs and they also shamefully recycle their own material: Pancake recalls Walter Sobchak's wayside activism and a gag involving a misfired gun is ripped wholesale from "Intolerable Cruelty" among other infractions.
As a fan with lofty expectations, I enjoyed the macabre spirit but found it wanting: It carries the skeleton of a Coen classic with none of the taut muscle, the unabashed oddities.
The brothers need to climb back into their brains and reclaim their individuality instead of churning out idyllic, Hollywood-friendly postcards.
Grade: B