Professor G.H. Dorr is an eccentric professor-turned-criminal-mastermind who has come up with the master plan to steal millions of dollars in a massive heist of a New Orleans riverboat casino. While all the gambling happens on the riverboat, the money is stored in a building underground alongside the Mississippi river. And while the main entrance to the vault is guarded by thick doors and guards the walls themselves are just normal walls. So he has rented a room with an old lady Mrs. Munson, who has a root cellar that can tunnel directly to the vault and through the walls. So Dorr has got himself four accomplices a bumbling idiot Lump, a middle eastern general, a young hip hopping black man Gawain and an explosive expert Pancake to help him dig the tunnel through an ad that he placed in a newspaper. So the plan is to pretend they are practicing music in the root cellar while in truth they are tunneling to the vault. But after several mishaps and some foolishness on their parts the old lady seems to be wise to their schemes and is beginning to get in the way. So they decide that they need to remove her from the equation, but doing so might prove to be more difficult than they expect as while she seems completely oblivious to everything around her she still manages to thwart them as they plot to kill her.

I can’t put my finger on what I didn’t like about this movie, as from the previews it looked like it was going to be really good. The movie was just dry and lacking the wit that I would expect from the Coen brothers. I have noticed that about the Coen brothers movies you are really going to like them or you are going to find them somewhat boring. I have loved movies like The Big Lebowski while others like Intolerable Cruelty seem forced and not that interesting. I understand that the movie is a British comedy and you can expect some dry wit but the movie rarely made me laugh. I think the way that the Coen brothers rewrote Tom Hanks part was a big mistake because he was too eccentric and was not really allowed to shine in the part. If you have seen the 1955 original of this movie Alec Guinness played the part of Dorr and was absolutely amazing. It is a shame that the Coen brothers did not give Hanks the same opportunity rather rewriting the character to fit what they like in their movies, somewhat offset characters. The movie is good as a caper film because you do get drawn into the crime they are trying to pull off but the movie fails utterly as a comedy. So the movie becomes a wash, you can enjoy the antics of the characters as they try and pull of their heist but whenever they switch to try to be funny you are lost and bored. So it makes the movie mediocre overall and just average.
2.5 stars out of 5