Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

58 (Untitled)
96 35 Shots of Rum
56 Adam
72 Adela
39 Adventures of Power
78 Afghan Star
61 After the Storm
66 Afterschool
xx All the Best
58 American Casino
72 Amreeka
48 Antichrist
73 Araya
62 Art & Copy
55 As Seen Through These Eyes
76 Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86 Beaches of Agnes, The
13 Beautiful Life, A
70 Beeswax
35 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
71 Big Fan
66 Black Dynamite
51 Blind Date
xx Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
76 Bliss
35 Blue Tooth Virgin, The
26 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
57 Boys Are Back, The
45 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81 Bright Star
70 Bronson
45 Burning Plain, The
xx Carriers
55 Casi Divas
57 Chelsea on the Rocks
62 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
69 Cold Souls
59 Collapse
44 Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
82 Cove, The
75 Crude
82 Damned United, The
67 Departures
xx Dil Bole Hadippa
71 Disgrace
xx Do Knot Disturb
70 Earth Days
24 Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
85 Education, An
55 Endgame
xx Eulogy for a Vampire
xx Everyone Else
xx Fatal Promises
56 Fifty Dead Men Walking
62 Five Minutes of Heaven
74 Flame & Citron
49 Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80 Food, Inc.
28 Free Style
xx From Mexico with Love
50 Fuel
25 Gentlemen Broncos
50 Give Me Your Hand
58 Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72 Good Hair
89 Goodbye Solo
52 Grace
66 Harmony and Me
81 Headless Woman, The
xx Heretics, The
63 Horse Boy, The
73 House of the Devil, The
xx How to Seduce Difficult Women
74 Humpday
94 Hurt Locker, The
29 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
16 If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75 In Search of Beethoven
83 In the Loop
61 Intimate Enemies
42 Irene in Time
70 It Might Get Loud
46 Killing Kasztner
19 Labor Day
xx Laila's Birthday
41 Little Ashes
41 Little Traitor, The
66 Liverpool
34 Looking for Palladin
80 Lorna's Silence
83 Maid, The
xx Ministers, The
59 More Than a Game
67 Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
34 Motherhood
62 My One and Only
xx Mystery Team
48 New York, I Love You
73 Night and Day
66 No Impact Man
47 Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
34 Other Man, The
xx Painter Sam Francis, The
54 Paper Heart
xx Paradise
68 Paranormal Activity
68 Paris
44 Peter and Vandy
35 Play the Game
77 Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
xx Pretty Ugly People
65 Providence Effect, The
76 Rembrandt's J'accuse
69 September Issue, The
79 Serious Man, A
40 Shrink
61 Skin
77 Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, A
xx Skiptracers
46 Splinterheads
39 St. Trinian's
89 Still Walking
50 Stoning of Soraya M., The
55 Storm
65 Tetro
70 That Evening Sun
72 Thirst
xx Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (re-release)
61 Trucker
xx Turning Green
83 U2 3D
66 Unmade Beds
66 Unmistaken Child
70 Visual Acoustics
55 Walt & El Grupo
67 Way We Get By, The
69 We Live in Public
64 Wedding Song, The
64 Where is Where?
xx White on Rice
74 Woman in Berlin, A
69 World's Greatest Dad
70 Yes Men Fix the World
69 Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
xx You, the Living

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Hudsucker Proxy, The

EMAILPRINT

Hudsucker Proxy, The reviews
52
9.0 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 20 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 8 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

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.)

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...

88

ReelViews James Berardinelli

With its refined wit and glorious vision, The Hudsucker Proxy is certainly deserving of a wide audience.

Read Full Review >
88

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]

80

Empire Kim Newman

While not to everyone's tastes, this is without doubt one of the most exhilarating films of 1994.

Read Full Review >
75

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 >
75

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]

67

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 >
63

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]

63

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 >
60

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]

50

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]

50

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 >
50

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 >
50

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]

50

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 >
50

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 >
40

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 >
30

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 >
30

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 >
30

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 >
20

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).

Popular on CBS sites: SEC Football | NFL | Video Game Cheats | iPhone | Video Game Reviews | Notebooks | Antivirus Software

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use