When the Cheshire emerges...

No normal review for you this week, just a classic one. If you like the Coen brothers' work though you're in for a treat.

Raising Arizona (1987)

FANS of the kooky antics as written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen will know there’s a real subtlety to the craziness of their stories. For them it seems second nature to come up with ideas that stretch our imaginations of the human condition. To audiences it translates into a rarity of comedy, in the way of presenting characters that are so wrong but also so right.

HI (Nicolas Cage) is often in trouble with the law, and questions himself as to what the drawing card is for doing bad things. One is undoubtedly Ed (Holly Hunter), the officer who takes his mug shot. They fall in love, marry and then find they can’t conceive. Enter a crazy plot to steal a quintuplet from a rich family in town and you have the Coen effect.

As HI’s friends Gale (John Goodman) and Evelle (William Forsythe) come to them for aid after breaking out of prison, HI and Ed are at a crossroads. Ed wears the pants of the house, but HI’s gentle nature softens her resolve. While they try to hide the identity of the baby from the suspicious visitors, tracker Leonard Smalls (Randall Cobb) is on the case.

The brothers’ second film has less of the downright strange seen in later films like Fargo, instead persistent in trying to make you relate to a couple in a poor situation. The word crazy still applies, with plenty of deadpan comedy, but the little man at the centre gives this film heart.

*Published in the Mailbox Shopper (Dubbo) on Wednesday 16/1/2013.

MISSED LAST WEEK'S REVIEWS? See what I thought of Hitchcock and Diner.