The Hudsucker Proxy

The Coens most underrated film?

The Coens’ follow-up to BARTON FINK (1991) is part screwball comedy part clever satire. Its strange mixture of tones, along with some truly wacky performances and some mis-directed marketing made this a total flop at the box office. 

In 1958 a naïve country boy Norville Barnes (Robbins) comes to New York City to find a job and unwittingly becomes president of a huge company, Hudsucker Industries. Slimy boss (Newman) wants to put a schmoe in charge so that the company's share prices will fall and he can snap up ownership on the cheap.


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Of course he didn't reckon on Robbins' great invention the hula-hoop ("y'know for kids").

Fantastic sets and art-direction, this is easily one of the Coens' best looking movies. It is also one of their funniest, the dialogue rich with detailed comedy. Just don't expect to take it all in the first time you watch it. The characters speak at the speed of light in homage to the Preston Sturges screwball comedies that the Coens are so fond of.

The underlying moral that Norville's purity wins him success and then as he gets sidetracked by the pursuit of money, love sets him back in the right direction, is one of the Coens most straightforward. In other areas though it branches right out into the surreal witness the playing-with-time seuqence at the end.

Perhaps it is the Coens' refusal to take the easy, cliched route that lost them their audience on this one. Perhaps its even the title of the movie, after all The Shawshank Redemption suffered because of this. The Coens themselves backtracked by heading down the blackmail and murder line of their earlier Blood Simple with their best loved film Fargo next. But Hudsucker has a unique charm and it deserves to be placed up there amongst the Coens' best work. Check it out now!