I Heart Huckabees (2004)

Although I prefer to watch movies where I pretty much know what I'm getting into, I don't mind viewing films in which the screenwriter and director take some chances. David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees is movie that takes plenty of chances, and I liked what he was trying to do, but in the end this work failed to entertain me. Here's why.

I Heart Huckabees stars Jason Schwartzman as a poetry-loving activist named Albert. He is on a mission to preserve the country's open spaces by preventing huge department store chains like Huckabees (the film's version of Wal-Mart or Target) from building on previously undeveloped land. But he gets sidetracked from his mission because of several coincidences: basically, Albert keeps running into a tall, skinny African man (played by Ger Duany), and he has a feeling that there's an underlying reason for all this.

Albert can't shake the feeling, so he finally decides to do something about it. He goes to two so-called existential detectives, a married couple named Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) and Vivian (Lily Tomlin). In an effort to find out whether these chance meetings with the African man are in fact mere coincidences or if they have a deeper, more significant meaning behind them, these detectives follow Albert around as he completes his daily tasks. They analyze everything he does and try to identify the motive behind his actions. Then they couch everything in existential or other philosophical terms to make it all sound very important.

During the course of the investigation, we get to meet other people who are involved in Albert's life. First up is Brad Stand (Jude Law), a high-level sales executive at Huckabees who represents everything that Albert hates about big corporations. Brad is a good-looking, slick-talking charmer who has a story for every occasion and instantly wins over nearly everyone he comes into contact with. Brad also plays a very large role in Albert's attempts to get to the bottom of his coincidences with the African man. For example, whenever Albert falls into deep meditations, it's Brad's face that he sees and it's always Brad who's standing in the way of his (Albert's) objectives.

As Albert tries to work through everything, Bernard and Vivian introduce him to a man named Tommy (Mark Wahlberg). Tommy is firefighter who is fiercely and obsessively against the use of petroleum. His mania for this particular cause convinces his wife to leave him (taking their daughter with her), which throws Tommy into an even bigger cynical funk. While Bernard and Vivian have been telling Tommy that everything is connected, Tommy is starting to feel that just the opposite is true. Nothing is connected and nothing means anything. He converts to that line of thinking and tries to convince Albert to join him.

If you're still following along with the plot summary, then you're sure to realize that there's a whole lot of talking in this movie without a whole lot of action, and that's one of the things that made me dislike I Heart Huckabees. If the characters in a movie are going to talk that much, they better be interesting, likable characters. That wasn't the case for me at all. I thought Albert was whiny and annoying, and he irked me every time he was on the screen. Plus, his greasy, unkempt appearance was almost painful to look at. I didn't like him at all and didn't care whether or not he ever found the answers he was looking for.

The same can be said about every other character in this movie, too. We get to know them only at the surface level, and even though they talk about rather deep topics, the viewers never gets to feel as though we're really connecting with the characters. The concept of consulting with existential detectives is so absurd that I couldn't even begin to identify with any of the movie's major players. Sure, I can understand wanting to find out the meaning of your life, but the way this quest was presented in I Heart Huckabees was uninteresting.

Overall, I don't recommend that you watch this film. I know that I Heart Huckabees has received some good reviews, both in the press and by word-of-mouth (which is why I watched it in the first place), but I don't think it lives up to the hype.