THE HUDSUCKER PROXY
A film review by Chad Polenz
Copyright 1997 Chad Polenz
** (out of 4 = fair) 1993, PG, 111 minutes [1 hour, 41 minutes] [satire] starring: Tim Robbins (Norville Barnes), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amy Archer), Paul Newman (Sidney J. Mussburger), produced by Ethan Coen, written by Ethan and Joel Coen, Sam Raimi, directed by Joel Coen.
In many adventure and fantasy movies there is a tendency to rely too heavily upon effects and gimmicks to make for an entertaining story. The same thing happens in "The Hudsucker Proxy" except with satire and image. This film is obviously a satire through mood and genre, but it's hard to tell what exactly it's satirizing. It's essentially a live action cartoon, but a strange one at that.
We meet Norville Barnes (Robbins) who is fresh out of college and searching for success. But he is stuck with an timeless dilemma: how to get a job without experience and how to get experience without a job?
The immediate outlook of the film doesn't seem like a comedy, but more of a lighthearted, satirical story that is certainly curious. The characters don't act like real people, but like parodies of parodies. The production design is quite surrealistic, like a cross between the darkness of Gothic and the lightheartedness of Bugs Bunny cartoons. Everything happens so quickly with little explanation, it's hard to tell what's real and what's part of the atmosphere.
We witness the president of Hudsucker Industries, the most important company in the world, leap from the 44th floor (45th counting the mezzanine) to the pavement below. The execs of the company are like those on commercials; drone-like and organized like clockwork, which is somewhat humorous, but not laugh-out-loud funny. They need a new leader, one that will be a total idiot in order to drive down stock prices so they can buy it all for themselves. Guess who's going to be their proxy?
At this point there is a lot of potential - the film could go on to be a straight fish-out-of-water comedy, but instead it remains on course as a decorative, highbrow, satire. Eventually we have many formulated characters: Norville, the lowbrow, gullible manchild; Mussburger (Newman) the typical con man in a world full of idiots; and Amy Archer (Leigh), the fast-talking, feminist journalist.
It all seems to blend together within its context, but as a whole, the film doesn't work. The settings, acting, and direction are all fine but the script is just plain boring.
So what is the point of "The Hudsucker Proxy?" What are the points of the things that are mocked? And why make it all so formulated and cliche? Sometimes open-ended stories like this can be fascinating, but this was just puzzling.
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