Raising Arizona-Revisiting the Live-Action Cartoon MAdness

Revisiting Raising Arizona, I was even more taken aback by its rapid-fire pacing and pure live-action cartoon slapstick madness. It's a film that jumps from one moment of slapstick mayhem after another, and on my previous viewing, this pacing style stood out to me as somewhat overwhelming. On this viewing, though, that pacing made the film so consistently entertaining. The film jumps from one heightened gag after another, leaving for a movie that, from its opening sequence to the end, never lets up.

The Coen Brothers' filmmaking allows that heightened tone and comedy style to work as well as it does. The film captures each over-the-top moment and gag with a visual inventiveness. Rapid tracking shots, heightened low and high angles, strange POV shots, and spinning camerawork provide filmmaking that brilliantly brings each over-the-top gag to life.

But through it all, there's an incredibly endearing quality to these characters that makes the film so enjoyable. The Coen Brothers portray their lead characters as they always do, as inept characters who think they're more competent than they are. But there's an added endearing quality to the character arcs the duo goes on throughout the film, being two characters who learn the errors of their ways and try everything in their power to improve as people. The film's ending sequence, where Nicholas Cage's H.I. dreams of a possible future for himself and the people around him, is one of the most emotionally honest moments of any Coen Brothers movie; as for filmmakers known for their occasional cynicism, it's a surprisingly optimistic ending for these characters. And because the film spends so much of the brief runtime exploring who H. I is as a person, the ending feels incredibly earned.

Though the Coen Brothers would later tackle similarly heightened comedies with The Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou, those later films never feel this heightened. The film feels like pure live-action Looney Tunes in style and tone. The film throws viewers into one over-the-top comedic set piece after another. But through it all, the endearing quality of the characters adds charm to the film and makes it all the more moving.

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