There’s no doubt the volume is too high in the Coen brothers’ 1958-set hula-hoop comedy, which is deeply indebted to the likes of It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and His Girl Friday. Gags and punchlines are hammered and repeated; supporting performances largely consist of screaming and yelling; much of the slapstick is painfully prolonged. And we never quite get a full sense of the main character, Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), a recent graduate of Muncie College of Business Administration who heads to New York City and becomes a stooge for a conniving executive (Paul Newman) at Hudsucker Industries. (Is Norville a simpleton or a savant? The movie, which Joel and Ethan Coen wrote alongside Sam Raimi, can’t decide.) Yet to call this a failure would be a mistake. The Art Deco production design and set direction are inspired (especially the giant hands of the Hudsucker building’s clock, which swing past Newman’s office window like sentinels of capitalism). Jennier Jason Leigh, as a fast-talking newspaperwoman, blasts into the movie with a delightful, throwback dexterity; it’s as if Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn had a baby. And there’s at least one signature, audacious moment of camera movement, as we follow Norville’s invention—the hula hoop—rolling down a sidewalk and coming to a playful spin at the feet of just the right kid. Perhaps most interestingly, The Hudsucker Proxy has an unexpected sense of benevolence—in the movie’s terms, a belief in the “second chance”—that only Raising Arizona, of their previous films, even hinted at. Like much of The Hudsucker Proxy, this quality is louder and more insistent than it needs to be, especially in the film’s literal deus ex machina climax, but it’s a curious, notable development in their career nonetheless.
