I feel that the Coen Brothers are far too talented to ever make a truly awful film, The Hudsucker Proxy is the closest one of their films has gotten to buck that notion. In their send up to Old Hollywood screwball comedies, the brothers tend to miss more then they hit. Sure the film looks great (once I saw Roger Deakins's credit it all made perfect sense to me as to why), sure the actors play their part's well (Newman in particular is great, Robbins is decent, and while Jennifer Jason Leigh's fast talking reporter can get rather tiresome it's still on point). The Hudsucker Proxy achieves becoming an Screwball comedy incredibly well, but that's all it really achieves. It's all style and no substance. Narrative speaking, the film comes off as incredibly empty. Has some funny moments yes, but really has no interesting direction nor payoff (having some hints of being a satire that just doesn't develop well). I just found it hard to care about anything that was going on. In what is now a long list of films for the brothers, The Hudsucker Proxy just feels incredibly forgettable when compared to the rest of their work.