Bovie Movie

More Capra-Coen than Capra-corn, this is a throwback to the good old days of the screwball comedy. When Joel and Ethan Coen pay tribute to a period or a style of film-making, however, they never slavishly re-create, but always manage to impart some of their own unique vision. In The Hudsucker Proxy they marry the Art Deco designs of the 1930s with the go-get-’em attitudes of the 1950s to fashion a parable that might just have something to say about America in the 1990s. And, if they miss the odd trick in saluting the good old days of Frank Capra and that harder-bitten director of screwball comedy Howard Hawks, it has to be said that a Coen misfire easily outguns the best work of many of their contemporaries. Mocking the “anything is possible” ethos of the Truman era, it has a classic “little man against the system” scenario, with Tim Robbins wonderfully ingenuous as the mail-room nobody who hits gold when he invents the Hula-Hoop. In attempting to portray the kind of heartless villains associated with Edward Arnold and Eugene Pallette, Paul Newman mistakes excessive for comic, unlike Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose impression of Rosalind Russell doing a Katharine Hepburn is a hoot. Special mention, too, for cinematographer Roger Deakins and the art department (led by Dennis Gassner) because, for all its strengths as a comedy, this is also a visual triumph. 

This is by far Joel and Ethan Coen’s most expensive film and also their first working from an existing script. That it turns out to be their weakest effort so far may not be unconnected. A slick, colourful screwball comedy (like their own Hudsucker Proxy without the period setting), it follows the quest of ultra-successful divorce lawyer Miles Massey (George Clooney) to marry professional gold-digger Marylin Rexroth (Catherine Zeta-Jones) using his own cast-iron “pre-nup”. This being a Coen brothers film, it’s populated with wonderful, often grotesque supporting characters including Edward Herrmann’s philandering millionaire, Billy Bob Thornton’s dozy oilman and Jonathan Hadary’s eccentric trial witness. But when these turns distract from rather than add to the central plot, you’re in dangerous territory. There are moments of inspired, slapstick brilliance (not least those featuring an asthmatic hitman), and Clooney works his socks off, but it lacks a hard centre and plot keeps racing ahead of character. It’s neither as unhinged as their Raising Arizona nor as warm as Fargo; let’s hope this is an isolated blip on the Coens’ graph. 

While not in the same class as the Coen brothers’ previous film, Fargo, this goofy tribute to Raymond Chandler and film noir still comes gift-wrapped with enough good lines, ingenious plot twists and eccentric characters to satisfy their dedicated army of fans. There are, in fact, two Lebowskis: one is Jeff Bridges, who calls himself “the Dude”, an ageing hippy who becomes embroiled in the kidnapping of the other Lebowski’s wife, aided and abetted by tenpin bowling chum John Goodman. What follows is an insane labyrinth of plot and counterplot that encompasses the drug and porn underworlds, Busby Berkeley fantasies and bath time with a savage marmot. It’s a distinctive, crazy treat, decked out with a trademark film noir narration and marvellous performances from Bridges, the toothsome and taciturn Steve Buscemi and Coen regular Goodman, who based his Vietnam-veteran character on the bear-like writer/director John Milius.