Raising Arizona (1987)

Taglines: Their lawless years are behind them. Their child-rearing years lay ahead…

Raising Arizona movie storyline. Combining influences from Tex Avery cartoons to Sam Raimi horror movies to 1940s B-movies, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen followed up the stylish film noir of their debut, Blood Simple (1984), with this frantic screwball comedy. H.I. “Hi” McDonnough (Nicholas Cage) is a philosophical but slightly dim career criminal who has been arrested so often that he gets to know “Ed,” short for Edwina (Holly Hunter), the officer who takes his mug shots. Hi takes a shine to Ed and promises to go straight if she marries him.

She accepts, and they move to the Arizona desert, where Hi holds down a factory job and blissfully watches the sunsets with Ed. Their serenity is shattered when the couple decides that they want a child and discover that, as Hi puts it, “Ed’s womb was a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.” (One of the film’s many delights is Hi’s unexpectedly flowery dime-novel narration.)

Ed goes into a severe depression until she sees an item in the news. Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson), owner of a chain of unpainted furniture stores, has become the father of quintuplets, and he and his wife joke that they now have more children than they know what to do with. In what seems like a perfect “helps you, helps me” situation, Hi and Ed kidnap one of the Arizona infants, figuring that they’ll have a baby and the Arizonas will have less of a burden.

Raising Arizona is a 1987 American crime comedy film directed by Joel Coen, produced by Ethan Coen, and written by Joel and Ethan. It stars Nicolas Cage as H.I. “Hi” McDunnough, an ex-convict, and Holly Hunter as Edwina “Ed” McDunnough, a former police officer and Hi’s wife. Other members of the cast include Trey Wilson, William Forsythe, John Goodman, Frances McDormand, Sam McMurray, and Randall “Tex” Cobb.

The Coen brothers set out to work on the film with the intention of making a film as different from their first feature as possible, with a lighter sense of humor and a faster pace. Raising Arizona received mixed reviews at the time of its release. Some criticized it as too self-conscious, manneristic, and unclear as to whether it was fantasy or realism. Other critics praised the film for its originality. The film ranks 31st on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years…100 Laughs list, and 45th on Bravo’s “100 Funniest Movies” list. Raising Arizona was released in the United States on March 6, 1987.

Directed by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, Trey Wilson, John Goodman, William Forsythe, Sam McMurray, Frances McDormand, Lynne Kitei, Warren Keith, Sidney Dawson, Henry Kendrick
Screenplay by: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Production Design by: Jane Musky
Cinematography by: Barry Sonnenfeld
Film Editing by: Michael R. Miller
Costume Design by: Richard Hornung
Set Decoration by: Robert Kracik
Art Direction by: Harold Thrasher
Music by: Carter Burwell
MPaa Rating: PG-13 for adult situations/language, violence.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: March 6, 1987