I Heart Huckabees Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)October 1st, 2004
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David O. Russell's follow-up to Three Kings reminded me a lot of Punch Drunk Love right off the bat, but I think that had more to do with Jon Brion's score and the early scene in which protagonist Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) struggles to find his way through the maze-like catacombs of an office building which inevitably leads him to the office of pair of "existential detectives" (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) who he hopes will unravel the mystery that revolves around a tall African man. Yeah, it's a pretty wacky film, and I'm sure it sets the record for Most Swearing In The First Five Seconds Of A Film (and also The First 30 Seconds Of A Film).
Albert leads an environmental group called Open Spaces, and is trying to protect a marsh which is being hungrily eyed by Huckabees, a Wal-Mart clone which employs both up-and-coming sales executive Brad Stand (Jude Law) and his girlfriend Dawn (Naomi Watts), a/k/a Miss Huckabee from the store's ads. This makes Brad the natural enemy of an already fairly confused Albert, who is now being trailed 24-7 by the not-very-clandestine detectives, who run around planting bugs the size of Ding Dongs everywhere he goes. Mark Wahlberg plays another one of the pair's clients, and is teamed up with Albert as his "other." Isabelle Huppert is a mysterious investigator who shows up and starts following everyone around, which seems to greatly upset the original investigators. Did I mention they were married, and that Hoffman's hair looks like he just stepped off the stage at Beatlemania?
Russell's work here takes him back to the fertile comedic grounds he plowed in the hysterical Flirting With Disaster (a/k/a The Last Ben Stiller Movie That Didn't Suck Ass). He throws a lot of gags at the screen. Most of them hit and hit hard. He also managed to take two actors who I don't particularly think are very good (Schwartzman and Wahlberg) and got really nice performances out of them. Less impressive was the usually reliable Law, whose accent creeps through a little too much. Very funny stuff.
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