RAISING ARIZONA (1987)

RAISING ARIZONA (1987)

Tagline: A comedy beyond belief.

(Crime, Comedy, Drama) [PG-13]

Well, which is it, young feller? You want I should freeze or get down on the ground? Mean to say, if'n I freeze, I can't rightly drop. And if'n I drop, I'm a-gonna be in motion. You see...

In this one, a convict named H.I. (played by Nicolas Cage), can’t stay out of jail but ends up falling in love with a cop named Ed (played by Holly Hunter), when he isn’t in jail. They end up moving in together but discover they can’t have children. After finding out about a famous businessman and his wife having quintuplets, they decide it’s time to just go ahead and steal one of them. Hiding what happened becomes near impossible, but now H.I. and Ed have bigger problems. The baby has been stolen from them.

So I actually saw this movie for the first time in the theater in 1987 with my mom. I remember feeling like I was going to straight-up die with popcorn spraying all over the theater from laughter. For quite some time I honestly felt this was the funniest movie ever made. I am talking about “falling on the ground and rolling around in pain” because you are laughing so hard. Well, for some reason I didn’t get that same “die laughing” feeling this time around watching it in 2021, but it is still bizarrely funny. Sometimes being a little more mature sucks in regards to humor. 

H.I. who is the convict in the movie is trying to turn his life around and his antics required some massive acting effort on the part of Nicholas Cage. This is actually the first movie I ever saw with Nicholas in it and I was like “damn, that dude will probably be a star”. I guess I didn’t realize at the time, this was already his 10th movie. Holly Hunter as I mentioned plays “Ed” and unfortunately this character just isn’t likable at all for the majority of this movie's run time. I will say that by the end, she and most everyone in this ends up having at least a few redeeming qualities. Generally speaking though, it seems like Holly plays a bunch of characters I can’t stand. John Goodman plays a jerk convict friend of H.I.’s in this and he does an amazing job. Goodman does a great job of playing both good and bad characters, but in this one, you just can’t wait for him to make at least one smart decision. Randall 'Tex' Cobb plays a bruiting character named Leonard Smalls who basically will kill to get this kid that H.I. and Ed stole. His role is way out there, but I thought he did a great job in this as what amounted to being the film's only “real” full-blown villain. 

This movie is hilarious, but it won’t be for everyone. Convicts baby-stealing typically isn’t the type of thing that generates humor even if you are going out of your way to make that happen and try to give them all the right reasons. In 2021 it gives a weird story to this already weird depiction of Arizona in general. I live in Arizona and I always resented and hated the fact that most of the rest of the world looked at us like Arizona is all desert and only backward cowboys that eat cactuses live here. I have lived in Phoenix since 1974 and have never talked to anyone that talks like the people in this movie. I agree with former Scottsdale Mayor Herb Drinkwater who basically said the movie painted Arizona in a light that wasn’t favorable. It made us all look like idiots, even the sensible people in this movie are made out to be idiots, having said that, I didn’t go into this expecting anything resembling PC walking on tiptoes filmmaking. This is meant to be a light-hearted outlandish nutty comedy and I took it as such. 

If you liked NAPOLEON DYNAMITE or THE SASQUATCH GANG this is a more over-the-top film done in the same quirky humor vein as those movies. If you approach this thinking you are just getting full-blown nonsense, you might have the same kind of a blast I did. 

I think for me overall this is going to land back at a 5 out of 7. I think it might have been a 7 out of 7 at one point. There are just too many characters I don’t care for in this and the redemption for some at the end only goes so far.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF CIRCLE FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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