Review of Raising Arizona (1987) by Dawdlingpoet — 24 Nov 2021

This is a comedy crime film, with themes including redemption, family life and infertility.

First off, I thought it was worth watching to hear Nicolas' Cage's Southern accent and that did not disappoint! ok so it is a relatively dated film, being from 1987 (certainly dated as far as fashion and technology is concerned but then that is, of course, to be expected) but it was quite funny and light hearted from quite early on. The characters are all rather exaggerated in terms of their accents and sometimes their behaviour as well. There is a definite wackiness to the comedy - mostly visual comedy, slapstick in style. I note that this is one of the Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan) first films and its fair to say that their style comes out relatively well. Their films do tend to be rather mad-cap and feature somewhat, shall we say interesting characters.

Throughout the film there was a lot of instrumental music, the sort of music you'd tend to associate with people from the southern US states, i.e. banjo's playing and even some yodelling present. It reminded me somewhat of the US sitcom 'My Name Is Earl'. Its not exactly a greatly sophisticated film but it is an easy watch and it is certainly pleasingly distracting, plus, as I say, quite amusing. An example of one amusing piece of dialogue being when one of Ed's friends calls out 'son, you've got a panty on your head'. I did say its zany!.

Cast wise, as I say Nicolas Cage plays the ex-con H.I. McDunnough, who seems quite a working class, down and out type - not exactly the brightest button in the outfit, if you may. He visually looks quite surprised, bewildered even when Ed asks him if he's decided, or sorted out, certain things which I have little doubt hadn't even entered in to his head that their newly kidnapped son may need. Meanwhile, Holly Hunter plays Ed, H's partner. She is quite a fiery character, strong and opinionated. Other cast members include John Goodman, who plays Gale, one of H's old friends and Frances McDormand, who plays Dot. Trey Wilson plays the famous local businessman, Nathan Arizona senior. I found his character relatively amusing as he comes across as a local sheriff type, who insists on repeating his business patter/slogan 'if you can find cheaper items elsewhere then my name ain't Nathan Arizona!'. Content wise, the film contains no real sex content but one or two references to infertility and menstrual cycles and it features some fairly mild violence in the form of gunshots heard, with some blood shown but not a great deal. In one scene, someone is shown apparently targeting animals, which could upset some. Also some profanities are heard and there are a few robbery related scenes which some young viewers may find potentially slightly frightening. The film carries a 12 rating to reflect this.

Some people may feel it to be a little too heavy on stereotypes and feel it to be a bit condescending perhaps but I wasn't too bothered about it.

Yes I'd recommend this film, as I felt it was quite funny, with a good cast and it generally kept me quite entertained throughout. Its a fairly short film at an hour and thirty five minutes long - you could do a lot worse than to see this.