Review

Review Date: 10-October-04
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Just OK

I [Heart] Huckabees (2004)

The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. — Horace Walpole

The "existential comedy" I [Heart] Huckabees lampoons people who take themselves too seriously, who live in polar states of extreme doubt or certainty and ask too many questions or not enough. The point of the movie (if something so frivolous can be said to have a point) is that the sensible interpretation of existence lies somewhere in between doubt and certainty, meaning and irrelevance, darkness and light; balance is the answer. But balance, as we all know, is not easy, so it's understandable why director/co-writer David O. Russell lets I [Heart] Huckabees wander too far into left field. The movie spends so much time winking at its wacky characters and their dime-store philosophies that it never convinces us to care if they resolve their problems or not. As pointed comedy with barely a hint of tragedy, it suffers from too much brain and not enough heart.

The story hinges on a pair of opposing central characters: a young, hypersensitive tree-hugger named Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) and a smarmy corporate climber named Brad Stand (Jude Law), who form an unlikely alliance to save a wetlands from development. Albert sets off a series of crises when he hires the Jaffes, a team of "existential detectives" (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman), to discover the meaning of a coincidental encounter. The self-satisfied Brad is gradually exposed to himself as a shallow fraud, while his girlfriend and coworker at Huckabees department store (Naomi Watts) begins to question her dumb-blonde identity. Meanwhile, Albert's partner in existential exploration (Mark Wahlberg) abandons the Jaffes' warm-'n'-fuzzy world view for the bleak philosophy of their French rival (Isabelle Huppert), bringing Albert along for the ride. After a number of absurd confrontations, troubling glimpses of the American family, and cameos by Tippi Hedren, Talia Shire, and Shania Twain, everyone emerges with a new lease on life to take into the future.

There are a half-dozen genuinely hilarious moments sprinkled throughout I [Heart] Huckabees, i.e., not enough to sustain a full-length movie. Much as I enjoyed Wahlberg's over-the-top befuddlement and the spectacle of posh pretty-boy Law chortling "Dickweed!" from the limb of a tree, I had absolutely no investment in the characters, who (rather like Law) never struck me as truly human. (The only flesh-and-blood people in the whole show are a frighteningly average family who invite Albert and his friend to dinner and have no use for their leftist, eco-minded, soul-searching convictions.) Watching the film is an exercise in waiting for the next funny scene, not the steady progression toward a looked-for ending that makes all movies, even comedies, ultimately satisfying. Russell could have benefitted from the wisdom of his own conclusion, planting his humor in the more accessible middle ground of less thought and more feeling.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.