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I Heart Huckabees film review
I HEART HUCKABEES
Running time: 107 mins
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Mark Wahlberg, Jude Law, Naomi Watts, Isabelle Huppert
David O. Russell's new film defies easy categorisation. Part comedy, part drama and part detective story, it's certainly one of the year's oddest offerings. After making a big impression with Spanking the Monkey and Flirting With Disaster, Russell hit the big time with 1999's Three Kings. Five years later, with carte blanche to make the film of his choice, he has gone back to his student roots and written and directed a philosophical treatise on the meaning of life. The results are deeply disappointing, and the feeling of watching Huckabees is akin to being beaten over the head with the notebook of a sixteen-year-old who has just read Sartre for the first time.
Jason Schwartzman stars as Albert, a troubled young eco-warrior, who is definitely finding contemporary society a difficult place to live. Seeking redemption, he enlists the help of Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) and Vivian (Lily Tomlin), a married couple who work as existential detectives, namely helping sufferers out of their metaphysical crises. Jason follows their treatment (a lot of which involves hiding himself in a body bag) and the detectives follow him around constantly, analyzing his every move for signs of his problem. When he turns up at Huckabees, a department store which is planning to build on his beloved green fields, they realise that this is the root of his problem.
Brad (Law) is the slimy store manager, with a perma-tan, a penchant for telling the same Shania Twain story again and again, and an eye for the ladies, notably the store's chief model Dawn (Naomi Watts). Brad decides to turn the tables on Albert by signing up for the detectives' existential services himself, which only deepens Albert's despair. His only solace comes in the shape of Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), a disgruntled fireman who, in the wake of 9/11, is carrying out his own personal rebellion on what he calls the war against petroleum. To make matters even more complicated, Isabelle Huppert turns up as a rival philosopher and contradicts everything that Vivian and Bernard preach.
Russell crams in as many Eastern and Western philosophical strands about the nature of existence as he can, and despite his best intentions he unfortunately comes across as a latter-day David St. Hubbins from Spinal Tap, with too many bits and pieces of whatever philosophies drifting through his transum. This is a shambolic affair, with no coherent heart of its own, and where the comedy is often strangely flat. The confusion is echoed by most of the performances, as if the actors are unsure of what they are actually doing and simply decide to play it as energetically and quirkily as possible. The sole exception being Mark Wahlberg, who reverts to his little boy lost type, last seen in Boogie Nights, and delivers the only convincing turn.
The film is also too self-consciously flashy, and suffers from comparison to the work of Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Magnolia, a flawed but hugely superior work, it at times resembles. Now that Russell has got this out of his system, he will hopefully go on and make the next great American movie, but for now it's likely that as many people will Hate Huckabees as Heart them.
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