Cinema: Rootless People RAISING ARIZONA

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. For the McDonnoughs are soon furiously pursued by their gooney neighbors Dot and Glen (Frances McDormand and Sam McMurray) and their marauding kids, two fugitive brothers named Gale (John Goodman) and Evelle (William Forsythe), and a bounty hunter (Randall (("Tex")) Cobb) who roars out of Hi's dreams as the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse. Poor Hi and Ed. Raising Nathan Arizona Jr. (T.J. Kuhn) will bring them close to razing Arizona.

On the surface, this looks like The Ransom of Red Chief in one more modern movie variation. A couple of emotional nomads pull off a kidnaping, then work like thumb-tied demons to return the booty. But even the surface of a Coen brothers picture looks unlike any other. These two young guys from Minneapolis -- Joel, 32, who directs and writes, and Ethan, 29, who writes and produces -- proved with their debut film, the gory melodrama Blood Simple, that they are shrewd filmmakers who can give a skewed spin to a hoary genre. Compared with their new effort, though, Blood Simple was just a five-finger exercise with a knife spiked through the hand. To their old fascination with Sunbelt pathology, to their side-winding Steadicam and pristine command of screen space, the Coens have added a robust humor, a plot that keeps outwitting expectations and a surprising dollop of sympathy for their forlorn kidnapers.

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 of breast-feeding as a retardant to criminal behavior. Having kidnaped Nathan Jr. from the original kidnapers, Evelle wanders into a store and, just prior to robbing the place, buys balloons for the child. "These blow up into funny shapes?" he asks. "Not unless round is funny," the clerk replies.