The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

Starring: Tim Robbins, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Campbell, John Mahoney, Bill Cobbs, Charles Durning, Anna Nicole Smith, and Steve Buscemi, with cameos from Sam Raimi, Peter Gallagher, and the voice of John Goodman
Grade: C-

The only reason I watched The Hudsucker Proxy was because it has one of the most perplexing titles I’ve ever seen. I’m sure I’m not alone here.

Summary

The year is 1958 on New Year’s Eve in New York. President of Hudsucker Industries Norville Barnes (Robbins) is planning on jumping out of the window of his office to kill himself.

We then jump back to sometime earlier in 1958, just as Norville enters New York as the bright-eyed, big idea having college graduate from Muncie, Indiana. He’s looking for a job. After arriving straight off a bus, he goes to an employment agency to see what comes up, losing confidence quickly once he sees how everything available is asking for experience. At massive corporation Hudsucker Industries, we see that the company is doing fantastic. At the board meeting, one guy states the details on how they are succeeding at every level financially. Meanwhile, Norville leaves a diner. A newspaper flies towards him, and he reads it, with the paper highlighting a job with no experience necessary, to work at Hudsucker Industries in the mail room. Simultaneously as he leaves the diner and enters the door of the company to apply, the president and chairman in Waring Hudsucker (Durning) kills himself during the meeting by jumping through the window of the board room and landing on the pavement below, despite all the good news. Vice President Sidney J. Mussburger (Newman) grabs Hudsucker’s cigar off the desk and starts immediately where Hudsucker left off with the board meeting. He discusses what to do next, knowing that Hudsucker was the president and chairman and owned 87% of the stock. Apparently, Hudsucker had no kids or family of any kind, so his entire portfolio will be converted into common stock and will be sold over the counter to the public as of the first fiscal year following his death. This means they only have until January 1st before everything could change (a month from that moment).

Not wanting to give up power of the company to random citizens, Mussburger devises a plan with the board. Since they can’t afford a controlling interest while the stock is this strong, they need to make the stock worth nothing, so the members can buy it all up while it’s low. To do that, Mussburger plans on hiring any dipshit off the street to become the new chairman to inspire panic in the public. The person will be a pawn in the scheme, a proxy if you will.

Does the title make sense now?

Meanwhile, Norville is going through his day working in the mail room and it’s pretty awful, though he’s confident he won’t be in the mail room too long because he has this invention idea for kids that he’s sure will move him up at the company. Sometime after, a “blue letter” is brought into the mail room. A blue letter is extremely confidential information between the top brass of the company, and its usually bad news. The man that brought it down explains that the letter came from Waring Hudsucker himself before he died, and it’s going to Mussburger. Since it’s a blue letter however, it needs to be directly in Mussburger’s hands. Of course, Norville is given the dreaded job to take it to him. After making friends with the fast-talking and constant joking elevator operator in Buzz (Jim True), they go straight to the top floor, so Norville can deliver the blue letter. After Mussburger angrily gets off of some phone calls once Norville enters the room, Norville takes the time to show him a picture of his invention instead of showing him the blue letter. Realizing Norville is the dipshit he’s been looking for, he lights a cigar for Norville and starts asking him some questions to see if he’s qualified to hopefully be the pawn that can “run” the company. However, Norville details a lot of his accomplishments, showing how much potential he has, so Mussburger fires him on the spot. He takes the cigar he lit for him and puts it on his desk, not realizing that he put it on the Bumstead contract he’s been working on for four years.

As soon as Norville starts heading out, the first page of the contract sets on fire, so Norville grabs the paper and throws it in the garbage, trying different ways to put it out as Mussburger yells at him. At the same time, Mussburger gets a phone call that says Bumstead (Jon Polito) is about to leave because they haven’t showed up with the contract yet. As he tells his secretary to re-type the first page, Norville throws the on-fire garbage can right through the window. Unfortunately, the wind from the opening comes in and whisks away every page of the contract. As Mussburger tries to grab the papers, he almost falls out the window too, though Norville is able to hold onto his legs and bring him back into the room. After this episode, Norville is made president, and the stock immediately begins to drop after the news is made public. At some newspaper company, chief editor Al (Mahoney) demands they get a story on Norville. The tough-minded, owner of a Pulitzer Prize, fast-talking Amy Archer (Leigh) thinks this whole Norville business is phony and interrupts the meeting to tell Al this news.

Later, Norville goes to some diner after work. Amy, acting as some troubled woman to get Norville’s attention, goes to the diner as well. She comes up with some sob story, and though Norville entertains it for a little while, he intends on leaving. As a last-ditch effort, she faints, so Norville picks her up and takes her back to his office on the top floor, taking the stairs because Amy doesn’t like Buzz. Once they get back to the office, Amy goes through her fake backstory to gain sympathy from Norville, but nothing gains his attention until she lies and says that she’s from Muncie, Indiana like him. He offers her the secretary job since in her story, she’s technically jobless, so she accepts. Following this, she goes straight back to the newspaper and writes up a story calling Norville an idiot. Back at Norville’s office at work sometime after, Norville has Amy write up a letter to send to the writer of the article (herself) to bash her article about him. This is where Amy starts to realize she was a bit harsh about the innocent man. Finishing up with the letter, Norville tells her to toss it because he just needed to get some things off his chest to calm down. He even takes pity on the writer, making fun of what he assumes is her personality. Unknowingly, he’s right about her for the most part, meaning Amy. Amy reacts emotionally, defending the woman that is actually her (without admitting it) and storms out of the office after slapping Norville.

That night, following work, Amy snoops around the office and into where the clock man (Cobbs) works. He outs her as the writer and explains what the executives are planning once she asks, but he gives credit to Norville having some tricks up his sleeve too (the invention idea he has). When he gets on Amy for acting the way she does though, it digs deep. She starts to realize she isn’t happy, and how Norville is a pretty decent guy. She reports what she found out to Al, but he’s not impressed because there’s technically no evidence. They accuse her of going soft on Norville, and she storms out. Though she’s continuing her story on Norville, the problem is that they’re right. She is starting to like him but at the same time, success starts to change him.

My Thoughts:

The Hudsucker Proxy‘s style is a homage to those movies from the 30s and 40s in terms of acting and story. It moves at a very brisk pace to keep the comic energy up, and it does work at times. The film feels unique in its own way, something the Cohen Brothers always excel at. I may not be a fan of all of their films, but I have to give them credit where it’s due. Every movie they helm is unique. Are they all good? Not necessarily, but they are unique. The Hudsucker Proxy is one that falls into the not-so-good-but-still-unique category. First of all, I’ll admit they emulated the style they were going for very well. It’s well written, bringing this 1950s business world to life through big set pieces and production design, striking cinematography, memorable characters that each have their own shtick to help them stick out, and some sprinkled in humor that can get a chuckle here and there. What comes to mind first is the whole flashback with Mussburger being saved by the guy that stitches his pants, and the fact that Norville’s million-dollar invention is the hula hoop.

That’s right. Apparently, this clown created the hula hoop.

It’s kind of funny to think how all of these evil characters approve Norville’s idea because a hula hoop sounds so stupid on paper, they are confident it will ruin the company enough for the stock to drop to record lows. It kind of makes sense everyone believes this idea will fail. Let’s be honest, pitching the idea of a hula hoop in real life had to have been a hard sell. This sets up the well-built joke where Buzz eventually comes up with the idea for a bendy straw and even Norville calls it the stupidest idea he’s ever heard of.

This is coming from the hula hoop guy of all people.

Little stuff like this is humorous enough to keep the movie afloat but because of how intentional the eccentric nature of the movie is, most of the story and the character’s moves are fairly predictable, especially if you’re an avid movie-watcher. You have the doofus main character that starts from nothing and gets a big head after getting too much success too quickly, resulting in a downfall before he realizes his mistakes, a woman that starts out as the career-driven hardass that has ulterior motives but softens up because the star is a nice guy, the bad guy with the plan, and a version of the stereotypical “magical negro” stock character played by Bill Cobbs. Admittedly, I did enjoy him humbling Amy early on because she starts off as a very annoying, fast-talking newspaper woman. Thankfully, after the scene where she is called out for having a piss-poor attitude and personal life by Moses and indirectly by Norville, she wins us over soon after. This is exactly what the Cohens were going for, but I still fell for it. It just goes to show you that at times, a film like The Hudsucker Proxy can still make a predictable formula work if the presentation is done right. It doesn’t work the entire time, but it works here and there.

This type of overacting and fast-talking is a trademark of the characters of this classic Hollywood time period. It needed to be in the movie for it to emulate the style the Cohen Brothers wanted to capture. With this in consideration, Jennifer Jason Leigh was actually very good in her role. She embodied the role of the tough-minded journalist in a sea of male co-workers tired of her do-it-all attitude. Paul Newman is solid as the villain too. Mussburger is exactly what you would imagine an evil CEO to be. He chomps the cigar, wears the finest of suits, and will fire someone at the drop of a hat. You know this dude is a son of a bitch when Waring Hudsucker jumps out the window and kills himself in front of everyone, and his first response is to take the man’s spot at the head of the table immediately after. Tim Robbins plays the naive and optimistic Norville fairly well but honestly, if it’s not The Shawshank Redemption, it’s hard for me to get behind him as a leading man. It must be a personal thing, but I was never big on Tim Robbins. He tries to bring a comic flare to the role, but he’s just not that funny. The only thing he does well are his facial expressions that makes you believe in what’s going on, but that’s really it. He tries to say a bunch of sweet stuff to woo Amy, but I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel bad for him when his career went downhill either. Not only was it expected based off how the story was written, but I wasn’t behind Norville enough to feel as emotionally invested as I should have been. This guy almost kills himself, and I didn’t even flinch.

The fantastical climax was a major positive though. It brings in this fantasy element that you don’t see coming (because there’s nothing beforehand that suggests something like it could happen), but it’s not too far out of left field to where it doesn’t fit the story. It fits the tone well. Actually, it’s probably the best part of the movie.

I have no idea what the point of the dream sequence was with Norville ballroom dancing with that woman but once again, the weirdness wasn’t totally off the oddball tone of the narrative. It had nothing to do with the story and changed nothing about the character or his thought process. For some reason though, it was funny, and it worked. This is the type of stuff that only a movie like this manages to get away with.

The Hudsucker Proxy is an odd movie, and it knows it. The Cohen Brothers do a great job in honoring the films of the old Hollywood era they are paying homage to. However, it’s pretty predictable, only mildly interesting, and not funny enough for me to recommend it over other comedies. In addition, if you’re not a fan of the stylistic choices that give the film its unconventional style, embodying the old “screwball comedy” era it’s going for, along with its overacting and cartoonish humor that furthers this homage, then you have no reason to watch this at all. You might appreciate it if you have penchant for the strange and forgotten eclectic films of years past, but if you don’t care much for style, you aren’t going to like this. More than likely, you’ll find The Hudsucker Proxy to be too much.

Fun Fact: Producer Joel Silver wanted Tom Cruise to star as Norville, but the Cohen Brothers wanted Tim Robbins. Jon Cryer auditioned for the role too but let’s be honest, he didn’t have a shot in hell. Winona Ryder and Bridget Fonda also were in competition for the role of Amy Archer. Clint Eastwood was offered Paul Newman’s role of Mussburger, but he had to turn it down because of scheduling conflicts. Eastwood would’ve been pretty good too. Damn…