The Hudsucker Proxy is a film written, produced and directed by the Coen Brothers. It was released in 1994 and stars Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Paul Newman. The story begins in 1958 when Norville Barnes (Robbins) is hired at Hudsucker Industries. The president of the company has recently committed suicide by jumping out of a window and the Board of directors learns that shares of the company can now be sold to the public. One evil member, Sidney Mussberger (Newman), decides that the directors should all buy the stock to keep control of the company, but it is financially impossible. Mussberger gets the idea of depressing the price of the company’s stock by hiring an incompetent manager sure to run it into the ground. He picks Norville Barnes out of the mailroom as the proxy president. Amy Archer (Leigh) is a reporter who is assigned to write about Barnes’ rise in the company and ultimately discovers what is going on.
Box Office Mojo states that The Hudsucker Proxy grossed a domestic total of $2,816,518 and the production budget was $40,000,000. At its widest release, it was being shown in 126 theatres. A very interesting website called Ultimate Movie Rankings lists 17 Coen Brothers movies and the actual box office receipts, the adjusted domestic receipts, critic and audience rating and any Oscar nominations and wins. The Hudsucker Proxy is near or at the bottom of most of the columns, with the lowest gross in both categories and second lowest critical rating. The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and was up for the highest award, the Palme d’Or, but lost to Pulp Fiction. IMBD gives it a rating of 7.3/10 from 64,452 users and a Metascore of 53. The Rotten Tomatoes site gives it a 58% rating from 40 professional reviewers, 23 Fresh and 17 Rotten. The audience score was better, at 79% positive from 42,924 users. But these are just statistics and don’t say much about the film itself. More interesting are the written reviews.
The New York Times review from March 11, 1994, says the film is “visually stunning” and while the film takes place in 1958, it seems more like a movie from the 30’s or 40’s and evokes the legend of Frank Capra. This is the fifth Coen Brothers movie and the reviewer says, “To appreciate the Coens, it is necessary to delight in their films' stylized, surface charms. Those charms are abundant in "Hudsucker," which is a shrewd comic valentine to the kind of movies they don't make anymore. It is also the Coens' funniest, most accessible film since the dark comedy "Raising Arizona." (in my opinion, an hysterically funny movie). It basically says that it is a well-made, funny movie, with the beginning being better than the ending.
A review from March, 1994, by Roger Ebert agrees with the Times, saying that, “This is the best-looking movie I've seen in years, a feast for the eyes and the imagination.” But he does not think it is as funny, commenting that it is all surface and no substance. He says that while the look of the movie is art deco 1930’s, it takes place in 1958, which it has to, because of Norville’s invention of the hula hoop. That is something else he takes issue with, because the advertising poster for the film clearly shows Norville holding a hula hoop, which kind of gives away the surprise of the story. He ended up giving the film two stars out of four.
I then read way too many reviews by regular people on the Rotten Tomatoes website. Almost 100% say that the film was stylish and a visual treat. But about half said the performances were lacking and the plot was not interesting. But the people that liked it, really liked it. Several people compared it to Brazil, a film by Terry Gilliam of Monty Python. There were a lot of opinions along the lines of, “It is the worst Coen Brothers movie, but not that bad.”
Then I went to Amazon reviews of The Hudsucker Proxy. There were not quite as many as Rotten Tomatoes, but enough. Amazon ratings were pretty good, with 61% of the reviewers giving it five stars and only 5% giving it one star. One theme that seemed to run through the reviews was the title. Several people said it did not do well because so many people had no idea what a proxy was. But, like the other reviews, most all the reviewers mentioned the beautiful look of the movie. Many of the reviews were recent, within the last ten years or so, and there seemed to be a consensus that it has been received better in that time frame than it was when it first came out. That seems logical, since the film only made about 1/10th at the box office as it did to produce. I think, too, that as the Coen Brothers became more famous, people who had never seen their earlier movies might look at them differently than when this film came out.
To sum up, I think people who appreciate the Coen’s quirky humor and less than sympathetic characters liked this movie better than people who were just looking for a run-of-the-mill comedy. My review is that it was gorgeous to look at, mildly funny, but nowhere near the level of Raising Arizona, Fargo and Burn After Reading.
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