OK, so I missed the inside jokes: "The Hudsucker Proxy"

If I hadn't, maybe I wouldn't have thought this movie was merely OK.

Faithful readers know that I'm down with the Coen brothers. No need to recap their triumphs here, but suffice it to say "Raising Arizona" is one of my all-time faves, "Fargo" is pretty damn good, and "The Big Lebowski" has grown on me with each viewing (and I've seen it only a few times).

Even lesser-heralded fare such as "Miller's Crossing" and "Blood Simple" -- their debut -- are solid. The more recent stuff, such as "Intolerable Cruelty," "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" is a little more uneven but still worthwhile viewing. In short, if I were the Coens, I'd put my track record up against anybody's. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Scorsese.

After all this time and all these movies, though, I had never seen "The Hudsucker Proxy." That oversight, my friends, finally has been rectified. (Heh, heh ... "rectified." What, Beavis and Butt-head aren't cool anymore?)

Our story has country-mouse-in-the-city Tim Robbins, hired in the mailroom of giant manufacturer Hudsucker Industries, drafted to be the company's president. Why, you ask? Because the last president -- and founder -- took a header from the top of a skyscraper, and the company's board wants to drive the stock price down they they can buy up all the shares. How better to do that than to bring an imbecile on board?

A game Paul Newman is the mastermind behind the scam, and Jennifer Jason Leigh is an ace newspaper reporter sniffing out the truth by going undercover at Hudsucker. Of course, she and our hero fall in love, but our gal Jennifer apparently forgot the clause in her contract that requires the boob shot. Yeah, she keeps her clothes on. I was as shocked as anybody.

Even worse, Leigh is kind of annoying. Strike that ... really annoying. I understand that she's doing the whole "His Girl Friday" thing; this takes place in the '50s, after all. Still, it was quite grating, and it got to the point where I grimaced every time she showed up.

Robbins was more tolerable, embracing the doofus-actually-onto-something role. While it took a while to get to this point, the build-up to his big idea -- "You know, for the kids" -- was all right in the end. Newman also was fun to watch, even if I could have done without the shirtless scene. Um, Paul, we're a long way from working the chain gang with the guy pushing Breath Assure.

Like the title of this post says, there apparently were a few Coen brothers inside jokes in "Hudsucker," from the company's name (taken from where H.I. McDunnough briefly worked in "Arizona") to John Goodman's cameo as a guy with the same name as his "Barton Fink" character. (One of the few other Coen films I haven't seen.) Now that I think about it, those probably wouldn't have changed my mind about this movie. It was entertaining enough, but in the bottom half of Coen films. Of course, if Glen from "Arizona" had been given a role, that would have changed everything. I'm crappin' you negative!