The Hudsucker Proxy Critic Reviews

With its refined wit and glorious vision, The Hudsucker Proxy is certainly deserving of a wide audience.Read the full review

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]Read the full review

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]Read the full review

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]Read the full review

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]Read the full review

Stylish and witty though it is, The Hudsucker Proxy has its problems, even for Coen fans. But throughout, there are wonderfully rich touches.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review