Very Cool!!!

A Masterpiece!

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Highly underrated comedy that gets better with repeat viewing. The verbal jousting and clever language is magnificent. A Coen Brothers film with a strong narrative arc, which is increasingly rare in their newer films. Particularly strong performances by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Paul Newman.

It's almost 1959 New Year's Eve and Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) gets out on the ledge of a highrise ready to jump. A year ago, he's a bright eye recent graduate arriving from Muncie, Indiana looking for a job. He starts work in the successful Hudsucker Industries' mail room. Owner Waring Hudsucker jumps to his death and his shares are up for sale on Jan 1, 1959. Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman) comes up with an idea to drive down the stock so they could buy up the shares. Norville is given the dreaded blue letter to deliver to Mussburger and he makes the clueless Norville the new president. Chief (John Mahoney) berates his reporters to investigate the new Idea Man and fast-talking Pulitzer-winning reporter Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) thinks he's a phony. She takes him for a sucker and he hires her as his secretary. Only he has a great idea... "you know, for kids."I really love two aspects of this. I love the awesome unique Coen visual brilliance. They fill this with very specific details. The other is the lovely JJL. I laugh at her non-stop monologue which is reminiscent of the old 50s screwball comedy. I guess it's not everybody cup of tea. Tim Robbins is sincere. It's wacky fun which may cut Coen fanatics the wrong way.

This may be the closest the Coens ever came to making a movie, you know, for kids! Not for all kids, maybe, but still. The use of classic slapstick humour, the enchanting settings (even if they are in a city, inside a giant building and a factory) and this endlessly optimistic (sure, he nearly hits rock bottom near the end, but a happy ending can not be far away) Norville Barnes make this a truly exuberant, over the top event, one that could be enjoyed by all.Or so you would think, but actually, the role played by Jennifer Jason Leigh became pretty annoying at moments (as did some others, like that elevator man), even if she did a great job of what she was supposed to do. At the heart of things, there is a sympathetic and heartfelt story perhaps, but it hardly came across with all the tomfoolery and what not.Well done, but hardly my cup of tea these days. 6 out of 10.

After watching "The Hudsucker Proxy" again, and reading Roger Ebert's review (again), I lamentably admit that I'm totally out of words. The film is so incongruously appealing that I feel my review should match the same level of creativeness and wonder it brought on the screen. But seriously, what more can I say about the Coen brothers' "The Hudsucker Proxy" that it's one of the best-looking comedies ever. There are many moments in the film, (in fact, quite every time) where I felt myself wondering if I had to keep track on the story or my eyes on the dazzling looks it offered: from the beautiful panoramic shots of majestic and creepy Babel-Tower like skyscrapers or the sumptuous recreation of the Big Corporations' inside rooms with never-ending tables as vertiginous as the buildings, from a horizontal perspective. Roger Deakins' geometric cinematography is absolutely breath-taking and rather than being put for the only 'eye-pleasing' purpose, works as the setting of some spectacular scenes.The most notable one is the opening where the respected President, Waring Hudsucker, played by the late Charles Durning, decides to make the big dive, fed up of all that business mumbo-jumbo he had to endure his all life. That long jump and long is an understatement (Hudsucker even finds time to tell people on the ground to move away), is weirdly convincing and hilarious through the anticlimactic slap at the end, the obligatory fat-ugly woman screaming and the verbal aftermath carried by heartless board members and their ruthless leader, Sidney Mussburger, played by Paul Newman. The jump scene sums up the film's appeal: it looks great and makes you laugh. And naturally, if you're a fan of Frank Capra's classics where greedy corporate businessman use a naive and idealistic schmuck to fulfill some evil schemes, and all the subsequent archetypes: spinning closes-up on newspapers headlines, nosy and noisy journalists and the snappy wisecracking workaholic female who'll get infatuated on the goodhearted fool she investigates on (Tim Robbins is perfect as the well-meaning Norville Barnes), comic-reliefs sidekicks and all that stuff, well, if you look at Hollywood Golden Age with nostalgic eyes, "The Hudsucker Proxy" will be familiar territory for you. And that Capraesque touch clearly helps to appreciate the film.Indeed, that half-homage and half-parody approach constitutes a solid platform on which the improbability of the story can efficiently evolve. And for some strange reasons, to which the Coen brothers only know the secret, each actor, by playing his character in the required over-the-top way, gave them that touch of believability for the film's bizarre poetry. I concede it takes time to get into some characters, I for once, thought Jennifer Lason Leigh was unbearable as the journalist, now, I can't see how her performance could have worked differently. The point is not that she impersonated Katharine Hepburn or Rosalind Russell well or badly, but that she was 'impersonating'. It's a film firmly aware of its 'cinematicality'.Naturally, the film isn't beyond criticism for all that. Many would argue that its very attention to great designs and magnificent looking details give a touch of seriousness inducing more serious expectations regarding the plot. My agreement with Ebert concerns the way the poster spoiled what would have been one hell of a middle-plot twist. I'm talking of course of the circle that would be revealed as the hula-hoop. That basic circle, Norville Barnes showed to everyone, adding the repeated line "You know, for kids" as if it was supposed to give a clue, could have been the film's McGuffin since it's the very device that triggers Mussburger's desire to hire Barnes as the proxy, in order to depress the stock and buys all the company's interests, but what a great surprise it would have been to have that revealed in the middle of the film.Apart from that missed opportunity, the film works and never leaves any hint of a dramatic evolution of the story. And when drama, there is, it only plays as set-ups from some screwball situations, the opening with Norville Barnes trying to jump from the Hudsucker's high clock is a reminiscence of John Doe's character (Gary Cooper) in "Meet John Doe", but I defy anyone to claim that he saw the resolution coming. Not to say that it would satisfy all the viewers, but still, it fits the film's surrealistic touch to the film, with all flash and style, but not without substance. Granted "The Hudsucker Proxy" isn't "Metropolis", "The Crowd" or "Brazil" but by its stylistic recreation of these iconic setting, leverage our thoughts to the more satirical material. Maybe it's too far-fetched, but I didn't think the film needed to speak explicit statement against savage capitalism; the point is smoothly made without distracting from the slapstick and screwball material. The assumption of 'all flash and no substance' isn't totally irrelevant but with such flashy brilliance and such great dialogs, the film can't be branded as unsubstantial. It's classy, surrealist, and funny and much more, it succeeds to put all these qualities together, something a few films can pretend to achieve. And on a more basic level, the film is so damn funny. I laughed, I laughed a lot. Maybe not as much as in the first act, but the laughs were equally combined with true satire and a dazzling photography, served by superb performances.The film works both on the surface and its content. I wish I could say more, I wish my vocabulary would be richer, but all I can do is summarize the film by paraphrasing its repeated line "you know, for laughs" That's what it is, a movie made for laughs, and the rest is just a delightful cinematic experience, something fresh made out of familiar material. Basically, the Coen brothers did the same than Norville Barnes: they reinvented the wheel.