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- 1987
- PG-13
- Twentieth Century Fox
- 1 h 34 m
- 1987
- PG-13
- Twentieth Century Fox
- 1 h 34 m
Summary A surreal, hyperactive farce in which a bumbling petty thief and the lady cop who keeps arresting him fall in love and decide to start a family. When they discover they can't have babies, they steal one from a furniture mogul who has just sired a set of quintuplets. The joys of parenthood are soon marred, however, by the difficulties of ...
Directed By: Ethan Coen
Written By: Joel Coen
- 1987
- PG-13
- Twentieth Century Fox
- 1 h 34 m
- 1987
- PG-13
- Twentieth Century Fox
- 1 h 34 m
Raising Arizona
69
8.3
Where to Watch
Summary A surreal, hyperactive farce in which a bumbling petty thief and the lady cop who keeps arresting him fall in love and decide to start a family. When they discover they can't have babies, they steal one from a furniture mogul who has just sired a set of quintuplets. The joys of parenthood are soon marred, however, by the difficulties of ...
Directed By: Ethan Coen
Written By: Joel Coen
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 23 Critic Reviews
69
57% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
30% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
13% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 23 Critic Reviews
69
57% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
30% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
13% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
Raising Arizona is the best comedy about kidnapping ever made. Small category, admittedly. This is a film that gets a laugh -- legitimate, unqualified, not a sick laugh at all -- out of a running gag in which a baby is left in the middle of an Arizona highway by thugs on the lam. Cars bear down, a "biker from Hell" attacks. How many filmmakers could get away with baby-in-jeopardy jokes? [10 Apr 1987, p.D1]
What makes this hectic farce so fresh and funny is the sheer fertility of the writing, while the lives and times of Hi, Ed and friends are painted in splendidly seedy colours, turning Arizona into a mythical haven for a memorable gaggle of no-hopers, halfwits and has-beens. Starting from a point of delirious excess, the film leaps into dark and virtually uncharted territory to soar like a comet.
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 172 User Ratings
8.3
84% Positive
144 Ratings
144 Ratings
15% Mixed
25 Ratings
25 Ratings
2% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 172 User Ratings
8.3
84% Positive
144 Ratings
144 Ratings
15% Mixed
25 Ratings
25 Ratings
2% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
Growing up, this was one of my favorite movies. On some days, it still is. Definitely one of my favorite screwball comedies of all time. It makes me crack up so hard sometimes and I do think it is one of the finer Coen brothers films, but maybe I'm just a victim of nostalgia. Nicolas Cage is incredible in this movie. It may seem easy to do what he's doing, but it's harder than it seems. Holly Hunter is great, John Goodman is great, everybody in this movie delivers a great performance, even Frances McDormand, who's barely in it. This is just a really funny movie with a surprisingly sweet ending.
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Nicolas Cage performance in Raising Arizona is good and the Coen brothers progressed after this.
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Despite all the mania and exaggerated characterizations, Raising Arizona is ultimately one of the Coens’ kinder (if not gentler) efforts, a raucous cartoon that consistently offers the beleaguered, desert-stricken H.I. little oases of grace.
Raising Arizona is no big deal, but it has a rambunctious charm. The sunsets look marvelously ultra-vivid, the pain doesn't seem to be dry – it's like opening day of a miniature golf course. [20 Apr 1987, p.81]
Cage creates a homey and thoroughly likable character who earns the respect of the audience, but Hunter is the real surprise. Appearing in her first starring role, the stage veteran displays so much energy that she forces the audience to pay attention.
Quickly and fatally, the overlooked form peels away from the slight, frail content, and the film starts to look like an episode of "Hee Haw" directed by an amphetamine-crazed Orson Welles. [20 March 1987]
The big trouble with Raising Arizona is that the Coens overdrew their wild and crazy yarn, and overdo almost every gag and gimmick. [20 Mar 1987]
Pitch perfect Coens comedy while also surprisingly mainstream. It may be their best blend in all their comedies, with a hilarious Nicholas Cage in the lead role.
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With a breakneck pace, Looney Tunes-esque ridiculously-exaggerated sound effects, boisterously rambunctious style, vertiginous camerawork and hysterical editing, I guess calling this **** crazy Coens' crime comedy film a live-action cartoon wouldn't be preposterous. It's wild and quirky, but it's also extremely smart and clever in every respect. Just like a cartoon, it finds humor in the most horrifying scenes by hyperbolizing the violence to the brink of absurdity. But there's also boasts of that signature Coen brothers' stone-faced, deadpan humour here. Uses of repetition and refrains permeate the movie to produce some chuckles, but some of them are inextricably linked to the theme itself, most notably H.I. McDunnough's frequent run-ins with the law. Raising Arizona is also playful and cheeky, and I believe that is where it gains its heart. At the surface, the moments of emotional inertia are played for comedic effect, but they actually make room for H.I. McDunnough to reconsider and reevaluate the whole situation he and his wife are in after kidnapping the baby and ruminates over the consequences he regretfully waits. Nicholas Cage shines in these moments as his face that shows how bested by unavoidable fears he is juxtaposes the rather eccentrically affable atmosphere that predominates the entire movie. Holly Hunter's Ed, though, is the one who retains the emotional core of the movie that's ultimately unveiled by the end to hammer home the sweet message of the story. Hunter is phenomenal, and it's not her fault that the lunatic absurdism overshadowed the story's emotional beats every so often, the thing that made the movie a bit crude. Nevertheless, Raising Arizona is a fantastically maniac non-stop chase movie that's extremely heartfelt and kind at its essence, much like Gale and Evelle.
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Certainly one of the zanier movies I've seen. The Coen Brothers are in full force here as you can really see a lot of their "style" in use here and used very effectively as per usual. Cage does very well in the lead role and it really makes you miss the old Nicolas Cage rather than the one we're forced to see in today's world. Overall, if you like the Coen Brothers, you'll like the movie.
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I don't get the mixture of these many genres at all, I feel unsatisfied and left out from a whole lot of something.
Raising Arizona
Coen Brothers' joke is not something I get. I like the humor they have. I get the joke. But it cannot just be the joke. At the end of the day, it is a film. And it is not particularly the joke that I have an issue with, but it is framed that way. I cannot help but blame that at all. The writer Joel and Ethan Coen sat down to write a classic. That was in their mind. It is frankly clear. Take the set pieces, for instance, that they have created, going out of their way, for either a laugh or an awe. The prologue that eerily resembles with Pixar's Up and also has an equally intimate epilogue to finish the circle beautifully.
But it is the troubling journey that's not captivating as we're promised to. No matter how artistically they are flexing their muscles. The stops are the real issues. The narrative is put on hold when the joke is told and we are told to laugh separately before they start resuming, running, chasing and bickering. Speaking of which, the major laughs are drawn from the reaction that the lead couple offers us after a shocking information is revealed.
Not for us, of course, but for them. Holly Hunter who cries, nay snobs, on demand is the one driving the emotional car. She is doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to express the views or the state of the couple. Nicolas Cage on the other hand is playing the macho con artist who suppresses his way out of life and walks it off calling it a bad day and bad luck. And blending these two in one room in Raising Arizona, spirals a pretty standard married life oozing the issues that we've all known, experienced and agreed or disagreed to.
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Awards
National Society of Film Critics Awards, USA
• 2 Nominations
Young Artist Awards
• 1 Nomination
American Comedy Awards, USA
• 1 Nomination