Though this is as different from previous Coen brothers movies as all of those are different from each other, it nonetheless picks up the interest of Barton Fink in the issues of commercialism, success, popularity -- the whole American, and particularly Hollywooden, ethos. That earlier movie confused a lot of people because, among other things, the anti-Hollywood hero was not anti-Hollywood in the same way or from the same angle of attack as the Coens. Hence: no one to root for. (No one but the Coens themselves.) Likewise in Hudsucker, it would be easy to find Hollywood counterparts to the undereducated, inexperienced, unworldly bumpkin who is plucked from the basement mailroom and lofted to the vacant President's chair on the forty-fifth floor ("counting the mezzanine") of the Hudsucker Building. The scheme, unbeknownst to him, is to ruin the company so that the board members can buy up the stock cheap when it goes public. But the Coens, devious as ever, are careful to give the starry-eyed tyro credit for a certain narrow and naive kind of genius. Touted to the press as an "idea man" (equivalent to the Hollywood "high concept"), he invents the Hula-Hoop (equivalent to Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Batman, take your pick. And of course there will have to be a sequel to it: voilà the Frisbee). His constant refrain in the pitch stage, and the actual ad copy in the promotion stage, mixes just the right amounts of enthusiasm and apology: "You know ... for kids!" That kind of genius, as ought to be obvious, is not unlike the kind in the old Hollywood movies on which The Hudsucker Proxy is modelled: the sentimental "Little Man" allegories of Frank Capra, the boisterous satires of Preston Sturges. And it is not unlike the kind that Barton Fink, the engagé Broadway playwright, was incapable of duplicating. And it is not in the least like the Coen brothers' kind. Theirs -- distanced and distancing, cool and cooling -- is another kind altogether. You know ... for grownups! With Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd