Product Description

THEY THOUGHT HE WAS A FALL GUY. BUT HE THREW THEM FOR A HOOP. THE CHAIRMAN'S PLAN WAS TO PUT A DING-DONG AT THE HEAD OF HUDSUCKER INC., THEN SNAP UP THE STOCK AT A BARGAIN PRICE WHEN IT FALLS. BUT THE PLAN DIDN'T COUNT ON THE FOOL CHOSEN. MAILROOM FLUNKIE HAVING AN IDEA OF HIS OWN. IT'S CALLED THE HULA HOOP.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2834 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 1999-05-18
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, HiFi Sound, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
The Coen brothers (Raising Arizona, Fargo) have become the most consistently original filmmakers in the land. In a salute/reworking of the fast-talking comedies of the '40s, we follow Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) and his amazing rise to the top. But he's only a puppet for the evil Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman), who wants the company for himself. The Coens' design is the real star, and their first big-budget film will stimulate movie fans. The story weakens in the middle, but you will find very few films that move with this much imagination. As a Kate Hepburn hybrid, Jennifer Jason Leigh is wonderful in an almost unplayable role. The less you know about the film, the better it plays, so just think of it as How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying mixed with Brazil and every journalistic drama made before 1960. Cowritten by Sam Raimi. --Doug Thomas

From The New Yorker
It's 1958, and Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) is a schmuck from out of town, come to make his fortune in New York. Meanwhile, Hudsucker Industries, headed by the scheming Sidney J. Mussberger (Paul Newman), is looking for a total idiot to stand in as president for a while. Slap the two together, throw in a motormouth journalist (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and you've made yourself a new kind of comedy: retro-screwball. But shouldn't moviemakers be investigating the modern implications of screwball, instead of retreading old ground? Still, Joel and Ethan Coen (who wrote the screenplay with Sam Raimi) know every inch of that ground, and the resulting act of homage provides their most likable film since "Raising Arizona." It means almost nothing, and slips out of your mind the moment you leave the theatre, but for a couple of hours it feels bright and brassy, shot in the clean, vertiginous style that the Coen brothers have made their own. The casting is a bit off-key: Robbins is too practiced a smoothie to make a credible jerk, and Leigh's Katharine Hepburn impersonation may tear at your nerves. Newman has a lot of fun; he unwinds the picture, relaxing its desperate need to show off. Joel Coen directed -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

trust me folks, it's a good one!
Two things killed this movie at the box office when it was first released: first, its title. Americans didn't seem to know what a "proxy" was, much less a hudsucking one. The second was its time of release. The movie came out in May as an early summer release but was actually a movie that would have been better received at Christmas. "Jaws" is a prototypical summer film. "It's A Wonderful Life," by comparison, would hardly be a summer blockbuster but sets the perfect tone for the holiday season. Come back in twenty years and you will find that "The Hudsucker Proxy" IS the Frank Capra classic for a new generation. It is Capra meets "Metropolis" blended with the smart humor of the Coens. The casting is near perfect. Tim Robbins is the naive and goofy savant. Paul Newman is as wonderful a villain as you will find as the evil Sidney Mussberger. Only Jennifer Jason Leigh takes a bit of getting used to as the tough talking reporter but she will move you by movie's end. I've had to beg, plead, wheedle and cajole my friends through the years to watch this movie and not let themselves be turned off by its title. Thus far it's left no one disappointed.

Terrific Premise and Acting; DVD flawed
The movie's middle third is unbelievably funny, and Jennifer Jason Leigh is perfect. Buscemi shows up briefly during a scene at the Beatnik bar. The DVD isn't of great quality, though. The first hint comes from the fact that "Ethan" (as in "Coen") is spelled "Ethen" in the jewel case's blurb. As soon as you begin watching, you'll notice the graininess in the opening shots, and some jaggies during a pan from Tim Robbins on the ledge. The DVD is ok from then on, until you get to the dancing sequence with the white background. So, the disc is a hack job (maybe that explains the low price, too), but the movie is so well done you can overlook it for all but about 10 seconds.

Great movie, not-so-great DVD
The Hudsucker Proxy is one of my favorite movies of all time. I won't go over what's so great about it because you can get all that just as well by reading the other reviews on this page.

I do want to address the quality of the DVD, however. While the DVD does offer both standard and widescreen mode (anamorphic, no less), it decidedly comes across as a sub-par job. The transfer is terrible, dark and grainy in places and completely washed-out in others (the dancing scene made me wonder if something was wrong with my player). The sound is in Dolby stereo rather than the 5.1 channel surround just about everything post-1990 is available in. Not to mention the complete lack of extras: no actor bios, commentary (which I would have really liked to have seen) -- not even a theatrical trailer. For a movie of this quality, I would have expected a lot more.

I love this movie, so I got it anyway and am happy with it (after all, it won't deteriorate like VHS). But don't expect a Matrix quality disk or anything.