Starring: - Tom Hanks
- Marlon Wayans
- Jason Weaver
Description:
If you've never enjoyed Alec Guinness in the classic 1955 British comedy that inspired it, the Coen brothers' remake of The Ladykillers may well prove hilarious. For starters, it's got Tom Hanks in a variation of the Guinness role, eccentrically channeling Colonel Sanders, Tennessee Williams, and Edgar Allan Poe in his southern-fried performance as Prof. Goldthwait Higgins Dorr, Ph.D. (named after an actual arts institute curator from the Coens' native Minnesota), a deliciously verbose con man who needs a secret headquarters for his five-man plot to rob a riverboat casino moored on the Mississippi. In the film's funniest and least-caricatured role (and even she can't elude the Coens' comedic stereotyping), Irma P. Hall plays the churchgoing widow who rents a room to Dorr, whose crew of "musicians" (in keeping with the original's plot) use the lady's root cellar to tunnel to the casino's cash-rich counting room. Rampant mishaps ensue, the body count rises among Dorr's band of idiots (including Marlon Wayans, spouting nonstop profanities), and the Coens put their uniquely stylish stamp on everything. It's a funny movie, allowing for some nagging flatness to the material, but if you've seen the original (and other vintage comedies from the heyday of Britain's low-budget Ealing Studios), you'll eventually wonder, what were they thinking? Accounting for all the qualities that grace any Coen movie (this being the first time the brothers have officially shared directorial credit), this revamped Ladykillers is a mixed blessing, both entertaining and superfluous.
1. Come, Let Us Go Back To God - The Soul Stirrers
2. Trouble Of This World (Coming Home) - Nappy Roots
3. Let Your Light Shine On Me - The Venice Four/Rose Stone/Abbot Kinney Lighthouse Choir
4. Another Day, Another Dollar - Nappy Roots
5. Jesus I'll Never Forget - The Soul Stirrers
6. Trouble In, Trouble Out - Nappy Roots
7. Trouble Of This World - Bill Lanford & The Landfordaires
8. Come, Let Us Go Back To God - Donnie McClurkin
9. Weeping Mary - Rosewell Sacred Harp Quartet
10. Sinners - Little Brother
11. Troubled, Lord I'm Troubled - Bill Landford & The Landfordaires
12. You Can't Hurry God - Donnie McClurkin
13. Any Day Now - The Soul Stirrers
14. Trouble Of This World - Rose Stone/Venice Four/Abbot Kinney Lighthouse Choir
15. Christian's Plea, A - Claude Jeter/Swan Silvertones
16. Let Your Light Shine On Me - Blind Willie Johnson
17. Let The Light From The Lighthouse Shine On Me - Venice Four/Rose Stone/Abbot Kinney Lighthouse Choir
18. Yes - Abbot Kinney Lighthouse Choir/Kristie Murden
Ladykillers
