Essentially a live-action Road Runner cartoon—albeit one driven by a dread of domestic responsibility—Raising Arizona marked a significant tonal shift for Joel and Ethan Coen from Blood Simple, their feature debut. The characters in that stylish neo-noir were cleverly envisioned, dryly comic archetypes. These are Characters. The story follows a habitual, convenience-store hold-up man named H.I. McDunnough (Nicolas Cage, sporting electroshock hair and a Road Runner/Woody Woodpecker tattoo) who falls in love with a straight-laced police officer named Edwina (Holly Hunter) over the course of his repeated arrests. Upon his eventual parole, they marry and eagerly hope to start a family. Fertility issues arise and adoption is denied, so H.I. and Ed go to plan B: kidnapping one of the quintuplets recently born to local unpainted furniture magnate Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson). Cage is in his sweet-doofus prime; his H.I. is moonstruck over Ed, but increasingly exasperated by trying to reconcile a legit family life built upon a stolen baby. Prodding him to return to his bad habits is an escaped convict played by John Goodman, one of the first screaming, sinister, figures of chaos he would play in the Coen canon. This is high-volume cinema, including Barry Sonnenfeld’s camerawork. (There are so many exaggerated point-of-view shots during the baby-napping sequence that the movie plays like a trial run for Look Who’s Talking or Three Men and a Baby.) The comic hysteria works best during a Huggies heist, in which H.I. tries to steal some diapers but runs afoul of trigger-happy store clerks, rampaging cops, and a relentless pack of dogs. And yet, despite all the mania and exaggerated characterizations, Raising Arizona is ultimately one of the Coens’ kinder (if not gentler) efforts, a raucous cartoon that consistently offers the beleaguered, desert-stricken H.I. little oases of grace.
