Word: hi
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...Hi...
Three passions consume the roiling romantic soul of Herbert I. ("Hi") McDonnough (Nicolas Cage). He has a fondness, though not really much of a talent, for robbing convenience stores. He loves his wife Edwina (Holly Hunter), a police officer he met on his frequent vacations at the local prison. And he shares her desire to create little baby His and Eds. Says Hi, in the daft and plangent narration that sets the tone for this terrific comedy: "Every day we kept a child out of the world was a day he might later regret having missed...
...Alas, as Hi mournfully notes, "biology and the prejudices of others conspired to keep us childless." Translation: Ed is barren, and the adoption agencies are not persuaded that a three-time loser would be a suitable father. Then Hi and Ed hear of a man who has more babies than he could find any honorable use for. This is Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson), the Unfinished- Furniture King of the Southwest and sire of Harry, Barry, Larry, Garry and Nathan Jr., the famous Arizona quints. It is a temptation no child-hungry couple could resist. They should have, though...
Every character, great or small (and truth to tell, they're all small), has the juice of comic originality in him. In jail with Hi, one convict strums Beethoven's Ode to Joy on the old banjo. The bounty hunter -- he's real, not just a Hi dream -- is a demon road warrior, a warthog from hell who grenades rabbits and torches roadside flowers, can catch flies between his filthy fingers, and has a secret tattoo of Woody Woodpecker on his left pectoral. Gale and Evelle (lots of gender-bent names in this picture) lecture Ed on the importance...
...cactus. But who can blame the Coens for blowing up their tale into conventionally funny shapes? Besides, as the brothers demonstrate at the climax, round is funny too. And more than a little poignant. The plot circles back to the quints' nursery, and then to the McDonnoughs' bedroom, where Hi has the strangest dream he dare consider. It is a vision into the future perfect, of middle-class stability and continuity, of a purloined child growing up to be a college football star and an old couple with funny names surrounded by a loving family they can never have...