I Heart Huckabees Review
by Andy Keast (arthistoryguy AT aol DOT com)November 8th, 2004
"I Heart Huckabees" (2004): **** out of ****
Directed by David O. Russell. Screenplay by Russell and Jeff Baena. Starring Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Lily Tomlin, Mark Wahlberg and Naomi Watts.
by Andy Keast
*"You just can't handle my infinite nature, can you?"
"That is so not true…wait, what does that even mean?"*
Everyone has had moments where they've felt cosmically cheated or overdrawn by life, some so much so that they will go to the most absurd lengths to create their own sense of justice. In "I Heart Huckabees," the very funny new film from David O. Russell, an environmental lobbyist (Jason Schwartzman) and a spokesperson for a department store chain (Jude Law) enlist the help of what the film calls 'existential detectives' (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) to make sense of their personal mysteries. Along for the carnival ride are a pensive and lonely fireman (Mark Wahlberg), an insecure print-and-TV spokeswoman girlfriend (Naomi Watts) and a French philosopher (Isabelle Huppert) who seems to embody Rand, Nietzsche and an array of sexual fetishes. And that is only the beginning.
*If only we had detectives like this in real life,* I thought as I sat in the theater. The movie exists entirely on a plane of its own design: it's a social satire about how adults apply philosophy and pop psychology to their personal and professional lives in superficial ways. It's also a bizarre and wonderful slapstick comedy, reminiscent of the work of Robert Downey Sr. or Allen's "Sleeper."
The film is not an existential comedy, as the adverts would have you think, but an observational one. It's not so much interested in the belief systems but in the believers, and in why they believe. What many critics and audiences may have missed was how Russell approaches his material, which in many cases so often results in the good old "so what's it about?" "What's he 'saying' with this movie?" Well…he has stated in interviews that such systems of thought are maddening, and that the screenplay (which is talky but not heavy) takes place in a post-9/11 world. What he may be 'saying' with "Huckabees" -as Kasdan 'said' with his "Mumford"- is that the search for answers leads to nowhere, so we would all do ourselves well if we lightened up. He doesn't want you to think, but to laugh.
He's also notorious for directing actors in manic, unconventional ways, and it shows. Wahlberg has the best performance in the film, plays it 110% percent straight, and almost steals the movie in a hilarious dinner scene. Watts gets the film's biggest laugh, in a scene where she must perform for a Huckabees television ad after having adopted a new 'outlook on life.' Law has a breakdown that reveals an identity conflict beneath his faux self confidence ("How am I not myself?"). And Hoffman drives home the film's central idea with its best line: "Everything that you want and could be, you already have and are."
"I Heart Huckabees" is the kind of film that spoils you for others, the way it pokes fun at modern man's search for pedestrian profundities that aren't there -unless he manufactures them in his own mind. Any practical person who has studied existential philosophy would find more comedy than tragedy in it, and that is what Russell has done here (the film has drawn comparisons to "Fight Club"). His film doesn't sanctimoniously impose any 'big answers' on you, nor is it desperate to be profound, like the god-awful "The United States of Leland." This movie at least knows that it knows nothing.
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