The Ladykillers

Jen and I saw this movie last Saturday. Despite a couple of off reviews, we really enjoyed ourselves. The reviewer at The New Yorker magazine said that it was overplayed: bq. But that, it became clear, was the problem: everybody in and around this movie is trying too hard. Everybody pulls a silly face, or sports a behavioral tic, or shouts his lines a little too loud, for too long, with the camera hanging in close to record the comic effort. After half an hour, we realized that, instead of enjoying a funny film, we were being lightly bullied into finding fun where precious little exists. Poppycock! The reviewer (probably a metrosexual) was expecting a nuanced performance. If you want nuanced performance, go buy a copy of Gigli -- you can get them really cheap these days. The Ladykillers was pure classical Opera Buffo - grande farce. The only way it could be played was to overplay it to the hilt. Jen and I were laughing so hard tears were forming. Lots of inside humor too. One example: One of the characters is a black woman and she makes regular donations to Bob Jones University (a Bible College). Bob Jones U. was ardently segregationist to the point of running a case up to the US Supremes in 1982 asking that it continue to receive tax-exempt status as an Educational Institution even though it did not admit "People of Color".