I went and saw “The Ladykillers” over the weekend and I’m happy to say the Coen Brothers are back in championship form, after the middling “Man Who Wasn’t There” and the how’d-they-screw-that-one-up brainfart “Intolerable Cruelty.” ‘Ladykillers’ is quintessential Coens, and successfully recaptures the spirit of their classic comedies “Raising Arizona,” “The Big Lebowski,” and most of all, “O Brother Where Art Thou.”
The script follows ‘O Brother’’s winning formula of dialogue filled with goofy Southern aphorisms, substituting gospel for bluegrass on the soundtrack; it's made especially hilarious by Hanks’ pretend-gentility (his invocation of the shofar may be the film’s biggest laugh). Also great to see Vern Schillinger of “Oz” playing an ex-Freedom Rider, and a Vietnamese character with a Hitler moustache who is known only as “The General,” though a running joke involving Bob Jones University isn't quite so successful.
Unlike last year, when there were no good movies to speak of for the first four or five months of the year, ‘04’s shaping up to be a good one, with the still-unanimously praised ‘Eternal Sunshine’ and now “Ladykillers.” If “Walking Tall” turns out to be a masterpiece, then I’ll be really pleasantly surprised.
Posted by Stephen Silver at March 29, 2004 02:30 PM