The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) **

 

With most movies, I have some idea what to expect going in, but I have to say, this was nothing like what I expected. It's by the Coen brothers, who did “Blood Simple,” “Miller's Crossing,” “The Big Lebowski,” and so on. I think it was reasonable to expect some kind of crime movie, maybe a darkly humorous one. They also did “O Brother, Where Art Thou” and “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” so I wouldn't have been shocked by a bit of whimsy, maybe something downright odd. I gotta say, though, nothing these guys have done before or since prepared me for “The Hudsucker Proxy.”

Tim Robbins plays Norville Barnes, a rube, new to New York, who gets a mailroom job at Hudsucker Industries. The company is in a transitional period owing to the suicide of its president. The second in command (Paul Newman) hatches a scheme with the board of directors to tank the company's stock so they can buy it up at pennies on the dollar. To do that, they need to hire a real idiot as their new president, and Norville fits the bill perfectly. A sharp newspaper reporter (Jennifer Jason Leigh) picks up on Norville's complete ineptitude, but she also falls for his big heart, and then she starts to sniff out the Board's evil plan.

The movie is a pastiche of old screwball comedies from the 1930's. The characters talk in those rapid-fire voices they used to use back then, saying things like, “Sayyy, chum.” The acting is over-the-top, the story is zany, and the whole thing, by rights, should be more fun than a barrel full of monkeys. I mean, it's directed by the Coen brothers, and Sam Raimi (“The Evil Dead”) helped them write it. This is a trio who know how to do a whimsical story and do it up right. Then there's the cast: Paul Newman, Tim Robbins, Charles Durning, John Mahoney. Sam Raimi's old standby, Bruce Campbell, even puts in an appearance. The problem is that everyone involved was having such a swell time gawking at the cool-looking sets and costumes, and perfecting their old-movie voices, that they forgot to put any heart in the movie. It's a silly, grotesque, mawkish story about characters whom we never get to care about at all. Looking at this big contraption of a movie, which is supposed to be some kind of cult classic, I feel a bit like Tom Hanks in that scene in “Big,” looking at a toy that is supposed to be fun, but “I just don't get it.”

2 stars out of 5