DEEP South films can ooze stereotypes, but there's no way that Tom Hanks' ridiculous character will fit in the little round holes.

Hanks - famous via serious roles as a spaceman, a D-Day soldier and a castaway - plays Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr. Already it sounds ridiculous.

With a Van Dyke beard, and the suit and haircut of a plantation owning dandy, Hanks barrels around quoting Edgar Allen Poe as he tries to set up the ultimate crime.

This offbeat Southern gent rents a room from widow Marva Munson (Hall), a pious southern momma, and plans to tunnel from her Missisippi basement into the vault of a river casino.

Dorr advertises in the paper for his 'crew', and ends up with a hip-hop idiot (Wayans), a plank-stupid linebacker for 'muscle' (Hurst), an absurd Asian man known only as 'The General' and an ageing hippie with bowel issues. It's a sort of Oceans Eleven without the good looks.

Problems start when Marva twigs something is amiss and Dorr plots to try to silence her, permanently.

Ladykillers is the latest from writer/director team The Coen Brothers and is based on the original 1955 version - the last of the great Ealing comedies and featuring Alec Guinness.

The Bros have been off key for their past few works (Intolerable Cruelty) and this shapeless spoof doesn't see the full return to form of Fargo or O Brother Where Art Thou? It's capable, but nothing memorable.

Hanks character is not that funny, it's much more funny that it's Hanks playing him. His vain pomp and verbally convoluted schmooze is a delight, likely to win over the audience along with the small-town spinsters.

Mono rating: six out of ten