Diana Htoo
Staff Writer
Raising philosophical questions about life hardly befits a comedy, especially when the attempt at satire winds up as a mess of philosophical nonsense and leaves moviegoers utterly confused and directionless.
Apart from occasional witticism and comical vignettes, Director David O. Russell’s supposedly fresh and innovative film, “I Heart Huckabees,” lacks a central storyline to glue all of the film’s high-flying themes and madcap characters together.
At the onset, the movie is simple and interesting enough to follow. Albert (Jason Schwartzman) is the central character — an environmental activist who alternates between delivering poems and spewing expletives depending on what he is feeling agitated about at the moment. It is Albert who hires existential detectives, Vivian and Bernard Jaffe (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman), to help unravel his “case of coincidences.”
An eccentric pair, Tomlin and Hoffman have no qualms about diving into cars, rummaging through garbage bins or carrying out any kind of spying on the people they have been assigned to help. But the quirky couple, who appears not to be unnerved by anything, soon faces a hindrance of their own. With the arrival of Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), a former apprentice of the Jaffes’ gone astray, the Jaffes are threatened by a rival with nihilist views of her own.
Another of the main characters the existentialists seek to help is Albert’s nemesis, Brad (Jude Law). A young corporate executive who works at the superstore chain Huckabees, Brad wears a half-maddening grin on his face even in the midst of taking over Albert’s role as head of the “Open Spaces” coalition.
Also brought into the mix are Brad’s model girlfriend, Dawn (Naomi Watts) — who undergoes a reverse “Extreme Makeover” to rebel against conventions — and firefighter, Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), a zealous fuel-conserver.
Though it asks the ultimate “what-is-the-meaning-of-life” question, “Huckabees” cares not a whiff about providing profound, thought-provoking answers. In fact, anyone who even tries to comprehend what the existentialists are rambling about may wind up feeling frustrated like Albert and Tommy.
What Russell — through dismissive tones — would actually like us to see instead is how pompous and ridiculous philosophical truth-seekers can be in trying to explain how life works. For all their squabbles over whose method is right or wrong, in the end, neither the Jaffes’ “everything-is-connected” theory, nor Caterine’s “you-need-isolation” assumption, is completely correct. It is only when their methods are fused can the characters come up with a viable solution to find the truth for which they are searching.
For those who catch a glimpse of Russell’s truth, the movie can be subtly enlightening. Yet for the scores of people who can make neither heads nor tails of the philosophical diatribe, “Huckabees” is a trying 106 minutes of trite and erratic footage to sit through.
The single-disc edition DVD, which will be released Tuesday, features commentary by director David O. Russell, Jason Schwartzman, Mark Wahlberg and Naomi Watts. A special two-disc edition will also be released Tuesday that has many other special features. A production featurette goes behind the scenes of “I Heart Huckabees” to examine the filmmaking process and Russell’s directorial vision.
The special edition also features six Open Spaces Coalition PSAs, which offer a humorous look inside Albert’s No.-1 cause — environmental activism. Another faux infomercial advertises the Jaffes existential detective services. But no amount of humorous extras could make up where “I Heart Huckabees” leaves off. Russell brings too much together all at once. The mocking humor he intended gets hidden by the selfsame ostentatious characters and frenzied array of subplots used to portray it.
It is no wonder then that rather than a careful, well-integrated story, he conjures up a string of sideshows that blare gibberish at us from all around. Ultimately, many viewers will be left as deeply puzzled as Brad was when he asked, “What does it even mean?”
02-17-2005
