Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 7, 1994 TAG: 9405090148
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But this is a Coen brothers' movie. Director Joel Coen and producer Ethan Coen, the talented duo who created "Blood Simple," "Raising Arizona" and "Barton Fink," know how to take a movie form and make it their own with quirky, original images and insights.
So it's hard to understand how "Hudsucker Proxy" happened. With their biggest budget yet - reportedly about $40 million - it looks like the Coen brothers made it all the way to the 44th floor where the big boys play.
And it's a long way to fall.
"Hudsucker Proxy" is the story of young Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), fresh off the bus from Muncie, Ind., with a degree in business. Norville is pushed by Fate (in the form of a newspaper classified ad that attaches itself to his pants leg) into a mailroom job at Hudsucker Industries. A second later in the door and he would have been squashed by the falling form of Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning) who has just launched himself from the window of the corporate boardroom on the 44th floor.
It's not that business is bad. But Hudsucker had his reasons, which would have come to light if Barnes had just done as he was told and delivered that Blue Letter into the hands of Sidney Mussburger (Paul Newman), resident bad guy.
Barnes galumphs through Mussburger's door just as the cigar-chomping, pit bull executive is on the prowl for some imbecile to lead the company into financial oblivion. Then the company's stock will be so devalued that when the late Hudsucker's shares hit the market, Mussburger and the evil corporate guys around the big shiny desk can snap them up for nothing and get richer.
Enter the dame (Jennifer Jason Leigh). As if the Hollywood homage weren't already heavy-handed enough, one cabby actually utters that line to another cabby as they sit in a diner watching the action. Tough gal Amy Archer is looking for her next Pulitzer Prize-winning story, and her editor (John Mahoney) figures Idea Man Barnes is it.
The problem is, Barnes is an imbecile but he's a nice guy, too, and once she's savaged him in print, Archer has second, romantic thoughts. Add to that the fact that Barnes really does have at least one good idea, which is central to the story and shouldn't be revealed.
In fact, the movie's one, perfect scene - the one that has Coen Magic stamped all over it - involves the moment when a small boy standing alone on a sidewalk discovers the beautiful simplicity of Barnes' invention. The movie's overwrought, breakneck pace is interrupted at that moment, and it is pure relief.
Then the movie is off again, hurtling toward a big ending, that moment of truth left far behind. Somewhere along the way - in their zeal for style - the filmmakers forgot that moments like those would have made this movie their own, something more than empty satire of the Big Hollywood Movie.
The Hudsucker Proxy **
A Warner Bros. release showing at The Grandin Theatre. Rated PG because kids wouldn't like it. 111 minutes.
by CNB