stones
and coens:
the hudsucker
proxy
the flintstones |
director
Joel Coen
screenwriters
Ethan Coen
Joel Coen
Sam Raimi
producer
Ethan Coen
cinematographer
Roger Deakins
music
Carter Burwell
editor
Thom Noble
cast
Tim Robbins (Norville Barnes)
Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amy Archer)
Paul Newman (Sidney J. Mussburger)
Charles Durning (Waring Hudsucker)
John Mahoney (Chief)
Jim True (Buzz)
Bill Cobbs (Moses)
Bruce Campbell (Smitty)
Joe Grifasi (Lou)
Peter Gallagher (Vic Tenetta)
Steve Buscemi (Beatnik Barman)
Sam Raimi (Hudsucker Brainstormer)
Jon Polito (Mr. Bumstead)
John Goodman (Newsreel Announcer)
mpaa rating: PG
running
time: 111m
u.s.
release: March 11,
1994
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other coen
bros. films
reviewed on this website:
- barton
fink
- the
big lebowski
- blood
simple
- fargo
- intolerable
cruelty
- the
ladykillers
- the
man who wasn't there
- miller's
crossing
- o
brother, where art thou?
- raising
arizona
director
Brian Levant
screenwriters
Tom S. Parker
Jim Jennewein
Steven E. de Souza
many uncredited others
producer
Bruce Cohen
cinematographer
Dean Cundey
music
David Newman
editor
Kent Beyda
cast
John Goodman (Fred Flintstone)
Elizabeth Perkins (Wilma Flintstone)
Rick Moranis (Barney Rubble)
Rosie O'Donnell (Betty Rubble)
Kyle MacLachlan (Cliff Vandercave)
Halle Berry (Sharon Stone)
Elizabeth Taylor (Pearl Slaghoople)
Dann Florek (Mr. Slate)
Richard Moll (Hoagie)
Jonathan Winters (Grizzled Man)
Kate Pierson (BC-52's)
Fred Schneider (BC-52's)
Keith Strickland (BC-52's)
Laraine Newman (Susan Rock)
Jay Leno (Bedrock's Most Wanted Host)
Sam Raimi (Cliff Look-A-Like)
mpaa rating: PG
running
time: 91m
u.s.
release: May 27, 1994
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
|
Consider,
if you will, two long-awaited megabudget movies. One has $100
million worth of advertising behind it; the other doesn't. One
is a blockbuster; the other has all but Houdinied from theaters.
One has built-in audience recognition; the other has a weird
title that seems designed to keep people away. So of course I'm
rooting for the underdog. The Hudsucker Proxy is the exact
opposite of everything bad you may have read about it, so please
see it, either in a theater (if possible) or on video. I don't,
on the other hand, care whether you see The Flintstones.
The Flintstones, which cost around $40 million and raked
in $37 million in its first weekend, is fun but instantly forgettable.
Hudsucker, which cost about the same as The Flintstones
but has only made about $3 million (making it 1994's most costly
flop by far), is terrific. That's right: Hudsucker the
failure, Hudsucker the critics' dartboard, is one of the
year's best movies, and I'll say so in front of God and everyone.
Of course, you didn't see Hudsucker mugs at McDonald's,
did you?
The movies have other things in common besides their price tags.
Both have elaborate sets; both feature an actor departing from
his nice-guy image to play dirty (Kyle MacLachlan in The Flintstones,
Paul Newman in Hudsucker); both were executive-produced
by Hollywood hotshots known for throwing serious cash at pet
projects (Joel Silver on Hudsucker, "Steven Spielrock"
on The Flintstones). Most tellingly, both have the same
basic plot: An anonymous company drone gets sucked into a scheme
that makes him the fall guy for corporate shenanigans; success
turns him into a stuck-up jerk until failure humbles him again.
The difference is quality, which begins, as always, with the
script. Three guys -- director Joel Coen, producer Ethan Coen,
and their buddy Sam Raimi, a zesty director in his own right
(who, oddly enough, has cameos in both films) -- wrote Hudsucker.
A reported thirty-three writers toiled on The Flintstones.
That round-table approach to scripting may work with sitcoms,
but a feature film needs shape, not only a succession of gags.
Hudsucker, luckily, has both. From start to stop, it's
a goof, popping from the fevered-prankster brows of the Coens
(Raising
Arizona, Barton
Fink) and Raimi (the Evil Dead trilogy). Many
critics hate the Coens because their films play too many games
-- you boys stop this damned fooling around, or you'll go to
bed without supper! -- and Hudsucker is, gloriously, no
exception. The parting-of-the-ways sequence here is the double-stitch
flashback, in which Paul Newman, literally dangling by the seat
of his pants above a 45-story drop, tries to remember whether
he specified stronger stitching in the seam of his trousers.
Either you think this is funny or you think it's stupid. Me,
I say it's a lot funnier than a bowling ball falling on Fred
Flintstone's head. The Coens should be applauded, not spanked,
for their virtuoso playfulness.
To be fair, The Flintstones offers its own oddball incidental
pleasures: Never again will we see Elizabeth Taylor and the B-52s
in the same movie. Kyle MacLachlan, beloved for his Dale Cooper
on Twin Peaks, gives a juicy performance as the corporate
greedhead Cliff Vandercave, who plans to rebuild Bedrock and
embezzle the profits. (As RoboCop and Darkman taught
us, rich guys who brag about building the City of the Future
are never to be trusted.) MacLachlan seems to be having a blast
-- with his Dudley Do-Right jaw, he's a cartoon anyway -- and
Rosie O'Donnell, though she isn't given much else to do with
her character, at least nails Betty Rubble's signature giggle.
It's probably perverse to criticize talented actors for not effectively
duplicating Hanna-Barbera doodles, but Rick Moranis and Elizabeth
Perkins ring no particular bells as Barney and Wilma. MacLachlan
scores because he isn't competing with childhood memories --
he's free to make Cliff Vandercave his own. Apart from him and
the cheerful O'Donnell, who seems happy enough to pay homage
to a cartoon she enjoyed as a girl, the actors seem rather sad
and lost; the loincloths force indignity on them.
It's ironic that John Goodman (who did outstanding work in two
Coen movies, Raising Arizona and Barton Fink) has
finally found a starring role in a hit by submerging almost everything
that sets him apart. He has been cast for his physique and hearty
voice. Yet there's something dark and restless in this actor
-- you see it on Roseanne, too -- that resists being flattened
into a two-dimensional clown in a movie for kids. Goodman does
a competent Fred, but he's been worrying in interviews whether
he'll now be typecast. If I were him, I'd worry: Apart from his
consistent excellence on Roseanne, his best performances
(True Stories, Matinee) have been largely unseen.
If The Flintstones becomes his biggest success, it won't
be because he can now carry a movie; the franchise carries the
movie. Goodman is a complex actor -- a born character actor,
really -- and if he ends up playing Fred or quasi-Freds for the
rest of his life, he has only himself to blame. He can always
return to the Coens; it seems to have worked for Tim Robbins.
In Hudsucker, Robbins plays Norville Barnes, an idealistic,
ambitious "farm boy" who becomes a patsy for the stockholders
of toy manufacturer Hudsucker Industries. The movie is aggressively
stylized and old-fashioned -- every plot point has quotes around
it -- and Robbins strikes his performance from the Stewart-Capra
mold. I'm not sure what I think of Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose
tickertape turn as a hard-edged reporter is Katharine Hepburn
by way of Howard Hawks. It is refreshing, though, to see her
enjoying herself in a comedy and playing a relatively stable
woman, and it's a relief to see Robbins being goony again after
his trilogy of jerks (The Player, Bob Roberts,
Short Cuts). His enraptured expression as he unveils his
new creation ("You know...for kids!") is worth the
ticket price by itself. Even when Hudsucker gets a tad
goony itself -- the climax is the textbook definition of deus
ex machina -- Robbins anchors the hijinks in reality.
Perhaps the most glaring difference between the movies is that
one was directed by the guy who made Blood
Simple and Miller's
Crossing, and the other was directed by Brian Levant,
the guy who made Problem Child 2 and Beethoven.
Joel Coen uses his sets to suggest a prevailing mood -- the chaos
of the mailroom where Norville gets his start, the icy vastness
of Newman's office -- while Levant just points a camera at his
sets; he's a tourist sightseeing in Bedrock. Neither film feels
inhabited, but that's the point of Hudsucker; Bedrock,
which should feel like a community, doesn't -- and that hurts,
because we're supposed to care whether Cliff Vandercave razes
Bedrock for his own gain. The Hudsucker Proxy is a witty,
engaging variation on a theme (rise and fall of the little guy).
The Flintstones is just a theme park. With, of course,
a theme song. |