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Saturday December 18, 2004

The Ladykillers

1 star (out of 5).

From the sublime to the ridiculous.

I think Tom Hanks is the bees' knees. One of the best actors out there -- back-to-back Oscars in that category for Philadelphia in 1994 and Forrest Gump in 1995 -- and surely one of the finer human beings on the planet. (And a co-religionist, by the way, thanks to his Big Fat Greek Wedding to Rita Wilson, who co-produced that fun flick with him.)

But everybody has a bad day or two, and Hanks is certainly entitled. The Ladykillers, the Coen brothers' 2004 re-make of the 1955 original, is irritating and verbose: I'm not sure whether irritatingly verbose or verbosely irritating better describes it, but the very irritating verbosity of this sentence will give you the verbosely irritating flavor of it. And at the end of the day (it feels somewhat longer than The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the extended edition), it seems more like an excuse for the Coen brothers to crank out another great Southern-fried soundtrack along the lines of O Brother, Where Art Thou? than a serious film project in its own right.

I think it would have been more aptly introduced as a sequel to that sonorous flick, and simply titled "O Brother".

[GET IT]

(2004-12-18 06:09:06.0) Permalink

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