I Heart Huckabees
To say I was surprised by this movie would be an understatement. I don’t often go to see anything but the big budget thrillers and horror flicks, but I felt like something a little different. I went to see this last Sunday, and me and my friend were two of only five or six people in the movie theatre, something I'd never experienced before, it was kinda nice. Felt like a private screening. Anyway, the movie.
The story basically opens like this; a married couple, the Jaffes (played by Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) are a pair of 'detectives' who help everyday people with their various existential-crises in their lives. They are hired by chance by a disillusioned activist and (terrible) poet called Albert (Jason Schwartzman), who finds their business card in the coat pocket of Huckabees superstore executive, Brad (Jude Law), who is attempting to take over Albert’s 'Open Spaces Coalition' protest sort of thing, in order to make him and his company look good. The Jaffes figure that Brad is the cause of Albert’s crisis, and to help him out they introduce him to weirdo fireman Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), who blindly believes that the cause of all the world’s problems are due to the use of petroleum. Things get even more confusing when Brad himself hires the detectives after having troubles with girlfriend Dawn (Naomi Watts, looking as glamorous as usual).
By this point, Albert and Tommy give up on the Jaffes, who seem to be making things worse, so they turn to their rival existential crises solver, maniacal French woman Caterine (Isabelle Huppert). From then on things get…odd shall we say.
First off, this movie is very funny. Mark Wahlberg, usually as wooden as a park bench, is great as fire fighter who cycles to house fires as he refuses to ride in the environmentally unfriendly firetruck. Dustin Hoffman is even more fantastic than usual, his goofy hairstyle and willingness to poke fun at himself sold the movie to me in terms of performance. The whole Shania Twain thing is just hilarious, I won’t explain it because you won’t get it unless you watch the movie. Despite this, it still manages to be very philosophical and stimulating, and covers everything from nilhism to the nation’s materialism. It’s very complicated, but thankfully, not in a pretentious way.
Spoiler:
The scene in which Wahlberg and Schwartzman attempt to appreciate life more by whacking each other in the faces with space hoppers is worth an Oscar on its own.
To sum it up, it’s a very difficult movie, one of the most difficult I’ve watched, and I’m not ashamed to say that I didn’t get much of it at first. It’s not the kind of movie you’d want to rent out to kill time, this needs time and attention, but ultimately it's a rewarding and funny story, a real breath of fresh air.
Highly recommended.
8/10