In this corner: Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall), widowed conservative, churchgoer, naive good samaritan. She's a sweet yet crotchety old lady who donates $5 a month to a religious college, participates in her full-gospel church, bakes cookies and chats with a portrait of her dead husband. She files police reports on things as minute as the neighbor kid listening to his "hibbity-hop music" too loud, loves the Bible and chats up a storm about nothing. She is formidable with a backhand slap and has morals that refuse to bend.
And in this corner: Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, Ph.D. (Tom Hanks), Southern intellectual, master of dead languages and long-winded speeches, smooth talker, Edgar Allan Poe enthusiast, criminal mastermind (sort of). With his deceptive grin, he has a penchant for going on tangents containing words most people don't understand and a sinister and a wheezing cackle. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The battleground: Munson's home, which is adjacent to a nearby casino. With a root cellar composed of loose soil, it is the perfect place to dig a tunnel to wealth and glory.
The plan: The professor assembles a crack group of hoods to do the job, including explosives expert Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons), inside man Gawain (Marlon Wayans), tunneling expert The General (Tzi Ma) and brute force Lump (Ryan Hurst).
The professor rents a room in Mrs. Munson's home and, fronting as a practicing classical ensemble, uses the basement to gain access. But Mrs. Munson's house rules (no smoking, no swearing, no explosions) begin to become obstacles, and the professor finds it more and more difficult to conceal his activities from the nosy lady.
Bottom line: This movie is absolutely hilarious, in a way that can only be devised by the Coen brothers. The directing team that brought us "The Big Lebowski," "Fargo," "Raising Arizona" and a handful of other quirky, wonderfully imaginative films has developed a keen sense for great characters and quirky storytelling. Those two aspects mesh beautifully in "The Ladykillers," a quintessential dark comedy with so many wonderful, oddball characters that the story, a remake of a 1955 comedy, never gets old.
Hanks is perfect as the professor, who makes George Clooney's character from the Coens' "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" seem quiet. With a Colonel Sanders style and an accent that sounds like a cross between Frasier Crane and Foghorn Leghorn, the ringleader is likable and snide. This possibly is Hanks' finest comedic performance to date.
Equally good is Hall as Mrs. Munson. She's strong-headed, and her constant, directionless mumbling is so realistically hilarious that she easily could be considered for awards come next year - or at least should be. The little-known actress almost steals the show from the formidable Hanks. The two wonderfully mesh as foils to one another, and their relationship is equally spiteful and friendly.
The rest of the cast also is good, though Hanks and Hall considerably overshadow them. The great character actor Simmons shines as Pancake, a misguided hippie tough guy with irritable-bowel syndrome and a whacked-out common-law wife named Mountain Girl. Equally good is Ma as The General, a tough-as-nails silent type who never hesitates on the attack and never is seen without a smoke dangling from his mouth.
The Coens push the film along at a perfect pace from the initial meetings all the way through the resolution. Though it is a dark comedy with some murderous content, it never advances past the playful, cartoonish feeling it generates with its colorfully stimulating sets and clever camera angles (including Lump's intro, shot in the first-person perspective of a lineman who can't catch the football or hold his ground).
The Coens have, once again, crafted a fresh comedy (though based on an older film) with imagination and innovation to spare. But the characters, so well-fleshed and portrayed, are the real showcase here. Throw the same characters into a film about doing math homework and they'd still make a great film. But in the element of a big-time heist, they're absolutely perfect.
