REVIEWED - THE LADYKILLERS: As a general rule, movie remakes tend to succeed in direct proportion to the quality of the original - the weaker the first version, the greater are the chances for improvement the second time around, although the Dr Dolittle remake starring Eddie Murphy was just as unspeakably bad as the original featuring Rex Harrison, writes Michael Dwyer
It seemed unthinkable that a duo as consistently original and inventive as Joel and Ethan Coen would ever deign to do a remake, never mind taking as their source material one of the classic Ealing comedies of the 1950s, Alexander Mackendrick's scintillating farce, which featured Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Katie Johnson, and was released on DVD this week.
To their credit, the Coen brothers have seized upon the comic potential of the original story, credibly transposing it to present-day Mississippi and lacing it with rousing gospel music. Wearing a caped suit and hideous false teeth, an amusingly droll Tom Hanks plays a voluble charlatan, Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, who, posing as a professor of Latin and Greek, rents a room in the home of an elderly, church-going widow, Mrs Munson (Irma P. Hall), who happens to live next door to the casino office he plans to rob with his motley crew of minor criminals.
All calculated, quirky creations in the Coen tradition, they include a foul-mouthed casino janitor (Marlon Wayans), a dim-witted football player (Ryan Hurst), a chain-smoking former South Vietnamese army general (Tzi Ma) and an explosives expert named Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons) who suffers from irritable bowel syndrome.
They claim - entirely implausibly - to be classical musicians rehearsing on antique instruments, but they underestimate the gullibility and tenacity of Mrs Munson. The movie opens promisingly as she complains to the uncomprehending local sheriff about a neighbour blasting out "hippity-hop" music, and with the arrival of the absurdly loquacious Dorr, whose florid dialogue is delivered with panache by Hanks.
His partners in crime are altogether less interesting, being mere caricatures, and the Coens squander valuable scene-setting time in outlining their backgrounds. Some of the attempts at humour are surprisingly, jarringly crude by Coen standards. And it is only in the second half of the movie, as the plot concentrates on the ineptly handled heist, and as the splendid Irma P. Hall steals scene after scene as the resourceful landlady, that the movie's entertainment value kicks in.
Ultimately, however, this remake is by no means a vintage Coen movie, nor close to a match for the original.
