I Heart Huckabees (Russell, 2004)

Tell me the significance of this coincidence: I’ve watched 3 random movies recently—Shopgirl, Rushmore, and now I Heart Huckabees—all featuring actor Jason Schwartzman. And in all three movies, Schwartzman has played a lovable schmuck with bad hair and less-than-desirable professions.

The lovable schmuck played by Schwartman in I Heart Huckabees, Albert Markovski, also stumbles on a puzzling coincidence. After meeting a tall African man at three chance encounters, Albert decides to take his case to Jaffe & Jaffe (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman), a husband and wife team of existential detectives.

Existential what? Yes, detectives. This is where we know that David O. Russell’s soup and nuts existential comedy I Heart Huckabees is as just as well soupy and nutty. As the existential detectives pry into Albert to find the meaning of his life, we see his quixotic quest to save a swamp from the evil denizens of Huckabee’s, a Wal-Mart like corporate bulldozer. Along the way, the script also throws in a depressed firefighter lecturing on the evils of petroleum (Mark Wahlberg), a French philosopher/sexpot (Fanny Ardant) Huckabee’s golden boy and Albert’s nemesis Brad Stand (Jude Law), and his ditzy girlfriend Dawn (Naomi Watts), who also happens to Huckabee’s spokeswoman.

The characters’ tangential importance in Albert’s life is well…tangential, but they’re here because, as Jaffe and Jaffe claims, “Everything is connected.” Too bad this disparate movie itself can’t figure out exactly how they’re connected. Add in monkey sex in the mud, whacking faces with balls, an Amish bonnet, (deliberately) cheesy special effects, and here we have a movie drowning in the kitchen sink.

Only Jude Law and Naomi Watts manage to stay half afloat in this messy puddle. As Jaffe and Jaffe continue their poking, Brad’s life begins spiraling downward, much to Albert’s schadenfraudelicious delight. Even with a shoddy American accent and a bad dye job, not to mention fake breasts and a long blonde wig in one scene, Law exudes enough charisma to almost give this movie a reason to exist. Watts provides the only other perk in this otherwise dull comedy as the hopelessly ditzy Dawn, who turns on the frump after an encounter with Jaffe and Jaffe. “You can’t deal with the infinite nature of my existence,” shouts Dawn in an Amish bonnet and overalls. “Yes, I can…Wait, what do you mean” answers Brad. The titter tat between this seemingly golden couple is the only comedy find you’re going to mine at Huckabees.

There are some other cheap laughs at the sheer ridiculousness of the situations, but none of the wit you would expect from such a highbrow concept. Or maybe those lightning fast one-liners were witty, but they are thrown out with such blasé that they hardly lingered in the air. Huckabees is light on characters and heavy on philosophy, or at least the name-dropping of it. But for a movie about philosophy, it sure doesn’t provoke much thought.
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n keeping with its peek-a-boo narrative, Huckabees doesn’t tell us the meaning of life; it doesn’t even tell us the meaning of Albert’s coincidence. As for my coincidence of watching Jason Schwartman films, let’s just say there is no significance, just as I Heart Huckabees has none either. But perhaps Russell wanted to make an inane and absurd comedy about the inanity and absurdity of philosophical musings. In that case: Bravo, you’ve made a good point. Now make a good movie.