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Hudsucker Proxy, The


8.8

based on 20 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 7 votes
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FILM:

MPAA 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.)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Drama \| Fantasy \| Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Ethan Coen Joel Coen Sam Raimi
DIRECTED BY:	Joel Coen Ethan Coen
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 18, 1999 Theatrical: March 11, 1994
RUNNING TIME:	111 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK / Germany / USA

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

The average user rating for this movie is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 7 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).

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