I Heart Huckabees Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)October 18th, 2004
I HEART HUCKABEES
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Existential detectives Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) and Vivian (Lily Tomlin) Jaffe are helping Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman, "Rushmore") discover the connectedness in life's random coincidences but he is swayed by the beliefs of their nemesis, Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert, "The Piano Teacher"), when the Jaffes also help Albert's rival, retail executive Brad Stand (Jude Law) and his girlfriend Dawn Campbell (Naomi Watts), the spokeswoman who persuades consumers to think "I Heart Huckabees."
Cowriter (with Jeff Baena)/director David O. Russell ("Three Kings") appears to be looking for entry into the quirky auteur circle of Paul Thomas Anderson, Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, but flights of existential fancy are not his strong suit and "I Heart Huckabees" is an airy comedy stuffed with entertaining performers saying little in rat-a-tat-tat rushes of dialogue.
For some unexplained reason, Albert finds three run-ins with the same tall Sudanese refugee a reason to ponder the meaning of life. The added coincidence of finding Vivian and Bernard Jaffe's business card in a borrowed dinner jacket sends him to their door (after wondering through mazelike plain white corridors right out of "Punch-Drunk Love"). Lily informs him that she will be observing him throughout his day and Bernard uses a blanket to demonstrate how everything is the same.
Albert is an environmentalist who believes that his bad poetry ("You rock, rock") is the way to move the masses, whereas ambitious exec Brad sees good PR for Huckabees, a department store chain that marries Target with Howard Johnson's color schemes which plans to build in the marshland Markovski is determined to save. Albert's escalating trauma make the Jaffes pair him up prematurely with his 'other,' firefighter Tommy Corn (Mark Wahlberg), but Tommy's already questioning the Jaffes beliefs and Brad's usurpation of Albert's coalition drives him into the arms of the Jaffes' fallen angel Vauban. Vauban has a more nihilistic view of life, believing that nothing is connected and that it does not matter what you do.
In the end, Russell brings his dueling philosophies together, determining that life is just one big gray area - everyone is searching for something and whatever answer suits one at the time is as meaningful as its opposite. Yet, despite this muddled attempt at some kind of existential relevance, "I Heart Huckabees" works on an absurdist comedy level, albeit in fits and starts, due to its unusually mixed ensemble. Mark Wahlberg is stellar as a man struggling with his kind's responsibility to the planet, ready to lecture on the misuse of petroleum with the tiniest provocation. The Wahlberg/Schwartzman pairing is brilliant and the two actors play off each other beautifully, especially employing Vauban's 'pure being ball thing' technique in which the two knock each other almost senseless with a big red ball. Another high moment finds the duo laying waste to a family dinner when they are invited to the Hootens' supper table by their adopted Sudanese lost boy. Talia Shire, Schwartzman's real mother, appears as the mother who may have scarred him for life by giving priority to an inane social obligation over the death of her son's cat.
Jude Law is pure American hucksterism, giving a surface performance until he's faced with the shallowness at his core. It's a screwball piece of acting unevenly matched with Naomi Watts' perky take on the film's most problematic role, that of a model whose spiritual search is satisfied by donning an Amish bonnet.
Tomlin melds her prior sleuthing experience in "The Late Show" with her own "Search for Intelligent Signs of Life in the Universe" to spin the more grounded Jaffe partner while Dustin Hoffman lets go of all of his usual actorly tics to happily float as the Magritte-loving optimist in a salt and pepper Ramones do. Huppert is well cast as their dour counterpart, but her literal wallow in the muck with Schwartzman falls flatter than a mudpie.
B-
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