Cady's Take:

Tom Hanks' plays Professor G.H. Dorr, a gentleman of the Old South. He presents himself decked out in a white plantation owner's outfit with a smile producing an imposing overbite of crooked teeth. Imagine an Edgar Allen Poe-obsessed Mark Twain.

The Professor is a criminal mastermind who rents a room in a house owned by an African-American southern Baptist named Mrs. Munson ( Irma P. Hall) . With the help of a raggedy group of crooks he plans to dig a tunnel through her root cellar into the vault where proceeds from the local riverboat casino are kept. He secures permission for himself and his four friends by masquerading as a musical group. Mrs. Munson lets them know that she is appalled by urban-contemporary music, which she refers to as "hippety-hop." She's offended by lyrics that, in this "age of Montel," she would have thought unimaginable. He eases her by explaining that her basement is needed only to practice "church" music.

His crew includes inside man Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans), tunneler Garth Pancake (J.K. Simmons), demolitions expert the General (Tzi Ma), and the muscle, simply known as Lump (Ryan Hurst).

When Munson sees their stolen loot and suspects something is amiss, the gang decides to kill her. The comedy comes from the idea that they're not murderers by nature and so we watch them gradually fall apart.

At times you are definitely caught off-guard with startlingly funny touches when you least expect them. How can you not laugh at a movie including irritable bowel syndrome? Though, in the end it feels like it was probably funnier on the page than on screen. But. my husband would kill me if I didn't call this movie a worthwhile rental.

Ok, this was supposed to be a comedy, right? I could not really tell since I did not laugh or crack a smile once, so I just want some clarification on this please. Someone? Anyone? Did you like this movie? Tell me the answer is no. It has to be no. If someone out there liked this movie I want to know RIGHT THIS SECOND.

Do the particulars really matter? A gang of inept thieves plan to rob a Mississippi river boat casino and experience madcap adventure along the way. Tom Hanks plays the ringleader, H.G. Dorr and he is, for lack of a better word, cartoonish. I was pleasantly surprised to see J.K. Simmons (Law and Order, Oz) however again, we have a cartoon character trying to inhabit what is clearly supposed to be a comedic caper. None of the characters in this movie work, with the possible exception of Irma P. Hall as Marva Munson, the old woman whose house serves as headquarters for this band of merry-less thieves. There is no common thread in this movie, each character seems lifted from a different time and place and are simply thrown together for convenience: "You know what would be funny? A Vietnamese tunnel digger, a hard-headed moron, an old-fashioned southern gentleman, a street thug, and a guy with a handlebar moustache that blows things up!"

I do not think I've ever seen a movie with Tom Hanks where I did not forget that I was watching Tom Hanks. In "The Ladykillers" all I could think for the entire one hundred and four minutes was "What is Tom Hanks DOING?"