The Hudsucker Proxy

A naive business school graduate named Norville Barnes arrives in New York looking for work and lands a mailroom job at Hudsucker Industries. When the company's founder dies, the board, led by Sidney J. Mussburger, schemes to install an incompetent figurehead as president so that share prices will collapse and they can buy up the stock cheaply. Norville seems like the perfect puppet, but his fortunes take an unexpected turn, and the ambitions of those around him, including a reporter named Amy Archer, complicate the plan.

Joel and Ethan Coen directed and wrote the film, with Sam Raimi sharing screenplay credit; Ethan Coen produced. It was the fifth feature in the brothers' directing careers, following Barton Fink and preceding Fargo. Tim Robbins plays Norville, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman, Charles Durning, Jim True-Frost and John Mahoney among a credited cast of eighty. The production, backed by Warner Bros., PolyGram, Silver Pictures and Working Title Films, had a budget of forty million dollars and returned about three million worldwide.

On IMDb the film holds 7.2 out of 10 from roughly ninety thousand votes, with a similar 7.1 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller number of ratings. A critics' rating of 7.1 out of 10 from fifty-three reviews places professional assessment close to audience opinion. The film blends comedy, drama and fantasy.