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Hudsucker Proxy, The
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 20 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 8 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Drama | Fantasy | Romance
Written by:
Ethan Coen
Joel Coen
Sam Raimi
Directed by:
Joel Coen
Ethan Coen
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 11, 1994
DVD: May 18, 1999
Running Time: 111 minutes, Color
Origin: UK / Germany / USA
Summary
RATING: PG for parental guidance suggested, some material may not be suitable for children
Starring Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman, Charles Durning, John Mahoney, Bill Cobbs, Bruce Campbell, and Steve Buscemi
A satirical comedy about the world of big business and corporate greed. An ambitious but naive young man rapidly moves up the corporate ladder from the mailroom to the executive suite, unaware that he is part of the board of directors' nefarious scheme. (Warner Bros.)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Barton Fink Blood Simple Burn After Reading Fargo Intolerable Cruelty Miller's Crossing No Country for Old Men O Brother, Where Art Thou? Raising Arizona The Big Lebowski The Ladykillers The Man Who Wasn't There
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
ReelViews James Berardinelli
With its refined wit and glorious vision, The Hudsucker Proxy is certainly deserving of a wide audience.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
In The Hudsucker Proxy, the filmmaking Coen brothers make dark, startling, wittily extravagant sport of the American Dream. The movie is opulent and wry, a bitingly intelligent fable about business and romance. [25 Mar 1994, p.A]
Empire Kim Newman
While not to everyone's tastes, this is without doubt one of the most exhilarating films of 1994.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)
A lavish parody of/homage to Hollywood big business comedies, The Hudsucker Proxy is gorgeous but lifeless, a very small joke writ very large by the talented but perversely insular Coen brothers.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann
The Hudsucker Proxy is the Coens' fifth feature in a decade, and you can see their tremendous artistic growth in every frame of the film. Classically composed, beautifully shot by Roger Deakins ("Barton Fink") and co-produced by legendary action-flick producer Joel Silver, Hudsucker has technique and visual invention to spare. [11 Mar 1994, p.C3]
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Hudsucker Proxy works more like a fairy tale in which all implausibilities are acceptable and none of it has to play by real-world rules. But it's a fairy tale without any lessons, a satire without any targets.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
Frigid soul or not, it's the most unforgettable supernatural comedy since Brazil. Could be it's time for the Coens to drop the pretense, and embrace sci-fi head on. [11 Mar 1994, p.4D]
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The comedy has moments of great humor and terrific visual appeal. It's a solid achievement for Joel Coen, who directed; Ethan Coen, who produced; Sam Raimi, who wrote the screenplay with the brothers. [25 Mar 1994, p.A]
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
If The Hudsucker Proxy is a triumph, it is a zombie one. Too cold, too elegant, too perfect, more an exhibit in a cinema museum than a flesh-and-blood film, "Proxy's" highly polished surface leaves barely any space for an audience's emotional connection. [11 Mar 1994, p.1]
Boston Globe Jay Carr
The movie seems destined to win a place in the nocturnal-cityscape-hell hall of fame. Its externals are brilliant, but The Hudsucker Proxy is virtually nothing but externals. [25 Mar 1994, p.52]
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
For all its technical bravado, The Hudsucker Proxy is an unsettling contradiction, a ''whimsical'' fable made by acerbic control freaks. It's a balloon that won't fly.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
At its best it's a free-form fantasy with glitzy, well-executed effects and assorted metaphysical conceits but little feeling for any of the characters apart from derision (with a few touches of racism here and there).
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Geoff Pevere
The Coen brothers have made the A-list of writer/directors with their big-budget replicants of Hollywood genres, but the wisecracking Hudsucker Proxy is all comic sound and fury signifying nothing All talk, no substance. [11 Mar 1994, p.C3]
The New York Times Caryn James
Stylish and witty though it is, The Hudsucker Proxy has its problems, even for Coen fans. But throughout, there are wonderfully rich touches.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The movie is that it's all surface and no substance. Not even the slightest attempt is made to suggest that the film takes its own story seriously. Everything is style. The performances seem deliberately angled as satire.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
The Hudsucker Proxy is no doubt one of the most inspired and technically stunning pastiches of old Hollywood pictures ever to come out of the New Hollywood. But a pastiche it remains, as nearly everything in the Coen brothers' latest and biggest film seems like a wizardly but artificial synthesis, leaving a hole in the middle where some emotion and humanity should be.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Howe
Missing in this film's performances is a sense of humanity -- the crucial ingredient in the movies Hudsucker is clearly trying to evoke. Hudsucker isn't the real thing at all. It's just a proxy.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Joe Brown
Another ultra-stylized movie-about-movies by the Cannes-winning Coen Brothers, Hudsucker is clever but cold, a heartless mechanical gizmo. The actors rattle around tinnily like shiny marbles inside its cavernous sets and hollow script.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
The Coens have deliberately cut themselves off from their best subject. Try as they will to create a vision of corporate (and urban) hellishness through sheer stylishness, theirs is a truly abstract expressionism, at once heavy, lifeless and dry.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Julie Salamon
Don't bother to see this film unless you expect to be tested in film class about the Coens' serial dissertation on American cinema. [10 Mar 1994, p.A16]
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Ken D. gave it a4:
The critics are right. It's a cold fish of a film, however well art directed it may be. It's as though the Coen's became so absorbed by the filmmaking process they forgot what they were doing it for. Along with The Ladykillers, it's their worst.
Pearson M. gave it a9:
Either you get the magic of this movie, or you don't. If you don't, I could see how it might be hard to watch, however, if you do, you'll be rewarded with wonderfully imagined story -part homage, part fantasy, part success story, and part romance.
Matt A. gave it a10:
The critics totally blew it on this one. The best performance of Tim Robbin's mediocre career, and some of the best work both Jennifer Jason Leigh and Paul Newman have done as well. A brilliant homage to classic 30's, 40's and 50's movies starring Cary Grant, James Stewart and the like. Easily one of the Coen's brothers best three movies (along with Fargo and Raising Arizona).
