Wonderfully offbeat film!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

When I saw this in the movie theater in 1987, I laughed out loud numerous times, which is something I rarely do when I go to the movies. I realized at the time that this was probably the funniest movie I had ever seen. But since I was still relatively young at the time (under 30), I assumed that I'd eventually see something that was even funnier.Fast forward to 2017, and this is still the funniest movie I've ever seen, so I guess I have to give it a 10! I'm not one of those people slavishly devoted to the Coen brothers, but I'd say Raising Arizona and Fargo are their best. However, they've had some duds as well (Burn After Reading, anybody?). But I do admire their fearlessness to take on many different genres.I thought the script for Raising Arizona was fantastic, and I thought they would be making other very funny movies in the future. Alas, that hasn't been the case. In terms of being funny, I thought Intolerable Cruelty was a distant second. Fargo is probably their very best, but the humor is a lot more subtle and nuanced.

I'm not a die-hard Coen brothers fan but I've watched and enjoyed the majority of their movies. This being one of their early ones, it was neat to finally watch it. From the start, it's apparent that they're going for a much more slapstick and visual humour than their later comedies like 'The Big Lebowski or 'Intolerable Cruelty'. Nicolas Cage is surprisingly restrained in this early role playing a lower than average intelligence 'repeat offender' robber. For me, I found John Goodman to be the highlight of this movie. Not only does he get some of the best visual gags, it feels like he knows how goofy the movie is and is just having fun with the role. But really, the visuals are the highlight of this movie. Barry Sonnenfeld was the cinematographer (Who would go on to direct) has plenty of fantastic tracking shots and cameras attached to motorcycles that really helps the movie stay exciting and fun throughout. The humour has aged quite well, the only thing I noticed is that it had a rather cute ending compared to a lot of their later comedies. Still definitely worth a watch, even without Nic going 'Full-Cage'.

This might be the best movie the Coen Brothers have done, and they have done some great ones. This is definitely Nick Cage's best movie, and he has done some really bad ones, this is not one of them. The Coen Brothers walk the line of humor and darkness so brilliantly. This might be the darkest story they have told, but is probably one of the lighter comedies they have done. In reality this is a story of a child kidnapping by a pathetic ex-con who can't do anything right, but in typical Coen Brother's fashion, it feels absolutely light hearted.

This is tall tale comedy about a recidivistic convenience store robber, H.I. McDonnough (Nicolas Cage), who marries a barren cop, Ed (Holly Hunter) whom he had met on several occasion while being booked into the Maricopa County Maximum Security System. Ed feels that they desperately need a baby to make their family life complete. But, since she can't have a baby and they can't adopt one (due to H.I's long criminal record), he decides to steal one of the locally well-known Arizona quintuples made famous by their father, Nathan Arizona. Arizona is an unpainted furniture tycoon and TV commercial celebrity. The kidnapping of the Arizona baby leads Nathan Arizona to "hire" a biker bounty hunter from Hell to find his baby. Added to this, H.I, has other problems such as a visit from two of his old penal inmates, who break out of jail and won't leave his family unit alone. Another of H.I.'s problems is the fact that his boss, Glen, and his wife, Dot, are "swingers" in the sense that they are into spouse swapping and want H.I and Ed to swap partners with them some time. They also want a child young enough to cuddle and seem to have their eyes on the Arizona baby. All this leads to some hilarious high-speed chases through the Arizona desert. This was the first Coen brothers movie that I ever saw in a movie theater. I wasn't ready for it then, but now it just fits in perfectly with all of their other great movies.