Pointless but a lot of fun

“The Hudsucker Proxy” may be the Coen Brothers most maligned film and having just seen it again, I totally understand how some may feel that way. It’s an ultimately pointless film; more of an excuse to bask in its old-timey, screwball aesthetic than find anything in its plot or character worth remembering. But the Coen’s never bore and even their worst movie has far more wacky value than most comedies ever manage.

At its core the film seems cobbled together from other influences. I’ve never seen a Preston Sturges movie, but I did notice the whimsy usually found in a Frank Capra one, the pattering, fast-paced dialogue of something like “His Girl Friday”, and the gothic, fascistic art direction and set design of “Metropolis”. It’s all grinded together into a case of Coen Brother eccentricity.

Like the great scene early on where business tycoon Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning), having just learned his company Hudsucker Industries is firing on all cylinders, seems to have more a bizarre fascination with his boardroom window. This is before he climbs up on the table and, with running start, crashes right through the window, the camera following him all 44 floors down like a Coyote and Road Runner cartoon.

It comes out of nowhere and what makes the scene even better is it’s the jumping off point for a lot of very funny tongue and cheek jokes. When an executive eulogizes the man, he says “Every step he took was a step up, except the last one”. In this the Coens are able to set up their little bad taste cartoon comedy early. All that’s left is whether or not we’re willing to laugh at all that comes next.

The whole thing centers around the Hudsucker board of directors wanting to replace Hudsucker with a real boob as company President, which will drive the stock price down, making the company easier for them to buy. Paul Newman plays mastermind behind the plan, Sidney Mussberger, Tim Robbins is the bumbling mailroom clerk, Norville Barnes, who becomes their pick, and Jennifer Jason Leigh is reporter Amy Archer, looking to dig up dirt on him.

The production design plays a key role early. Everything looks really intimidating; the towering skyscrapers, the dark, oppressively bustling mailroom, and vast, empty, gray corridors of power almost have a totalitarian quality. It’s almost like the Coen’s are trying to make a point about corporate culture but in the end it just feels like a funny juxtaposition that this is the place where Norville creates something as frivolous and silly as the hula hoop.

The hula hoop stuff produces some of the best laughs, whether it be Norville’s archetype drawing of the product he’s brainstormed, or all of the newsreel stories of hula fever sweeping across the nation. Robbins is great casting here, having the wild mannerisms of a bumbling but quirky inventor too naive to stop and think why he’s suddenly being handed all of this power.

Newman makes for a perfectly villainous string puller- a grave, crusty, mean old bastard with constantly devious machinations. And I got a kick out of Leigh. I know many found this annoying but she gets the fast-talking vocal pitch of Katherine Hepburn and the mannerisms of Rosalind Russell down pretty well. Watching her patter back and forth with her news editor (John Mahoney) is another of the film’s funny highlights.

But in the end it’s all just for the benefit of seeing a film that gleefully recreates the movies of the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, only for the purpose of producing glee. The characters are fine but it’s a story that doesn’t resonate in any real way other than to laugh at how quirky the whole thing is being. If it weren’t so funny, the grand production values would feel like a huge waste. Some may feel that way anyway. In the end I feel like it still holds up, mostly because the Coens keep up what they do best: wink at the audience.