I Heart Huckabees: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

(Originally published 2004)

A high-concept, high-minded piece of pseudointellectual trash, "I Heart Huckabees" is one of those stink bombs the intelligentsia like to champion. It's a cocktail conversation movie for the boxed Chablis, cubed cheese and corduroy set, those who absorb The New Yorker just before a party so they have something to talk about, and those who need movies such as this to say they got the joke, even though the joke is on them.

As directed by David O. Russell ("Three Kings") from a script he co-wrote with Jeff Baena, this empty, pretentious film is only watchable because of Lily Tomlin, who is in top form here, consistently funny and mischievous in ways that the rest of the movie thinks it is, but isn't.

If you see the film, see it for Tomlin - she's marvelous, almost making the experience worthwhile, thus the grade. Otherwise, not unlike the recent "Ocean's Twelve" and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," this is fraternity filmmaking that exists on the inside, made by filmmakers who want to keep audiences on the outside. The reason? If anyone did get inside and saw this movie for what it is - and many will - they'd see a fraud.

Describing the dense plot and all of its unwieldy manifestations and machinations is pointless, so let's cut to the essentials: Jason Schwartzman is Albert Markovski, a seething environmental-activist-cum-bad-poet who is struck by a series of coincidences - the repeated sightings of a tall African man popping up in the most unusual of places.

Jason is certain there's some otherworldly significance to the sightings, and so he hires two "existential detectives" (Tomlin, Dustin Hoffman) to follow his every move in an effort to discern his truth, the truth and, by the end of the film, hopefully even the meaning of life. After all, as Albert puts it, he has been orphaned by indifference for too long and he needs to reconnect.

Toss into this corked mix Isabelle Huppert as a French sexpot metaphysician with a thing for mud and sex, Jude Law as a slimy corporate executive with a thing for himself, Mark Wahlberg as a disillusioned firefighter and Naomi Watts as the face of the Targetlike superstore Huckabees, and you get a movie that spends too much time reaching for the unusual, grasping for the illogical, and coming away with a mess as a result.

As with the recent "Constantine," there comes a point in "Huckabees" when you wish the director and the writers would just tell their story straight. Do we really need the scenes in "Huckabees" in which people's body parts separate and float away as they begin to pixilate? Is it necessary to fragment the story's structure in an effort to mirror its characters' fractured lives? Confusion for the sake of confusion isn't entertaining - it's just confusing - so why go to the trouble of pushing elements to the fringe if the fringe can't sustain them?

In "I Heart Huckabees," the best you can do is isolate yourself from the movie and watch Tomlin. At least it looks as if she's having fun.

Grade: C-