Review of I ♥ Huckabees (2004) by Erin C — 20 Aug 2009

Over time since it was released, I Heart Huckabees has retained mention, it seems, purely on account of the spat between Lily Tomlin and director David O. Russell. I will admit it is interesting to try to discern who is most at fault based on the minutes of footage of the on- camera glimpses of it, but having returned to the film itself since seeing it in the theater, I feel I am watching a much different movie than the one I saw before. I was a mentally impatient high school kid, so presumably, it's actually me who's changed. I didn't like it any less. Indeed, I like it a lot more. It is a screwy comedy because for those who gradually zone out of the existential trip of the story, that it's at least hilarious can justify you taking it for granted and continue to be entertained.

What seems different is that the laughs are not always consistent. They're there; there is lots of wit in Russell and Jeff Baena's truly original screenplay. But it is a comedy more for aesthetic reasons, more for the reason that it suits the detachment arguably necessary for the thematic elements of existentialism, absurdism, surrealism, dialectical monism, environmental activism and even some Tibetan Buddhism to go hand in hand in the form of a coherent story, about how we cannot expect to be able to appreciate the joys in our lives without experiencing some pain. Behind the sense of humor is Russell's inscrutable belief in his material. This may account for his increased melatonin levels on the set that day with Tomlin. And that probably accounts to some degree for the years he's taken off since this film, though that is purely my hearsay.

I see a thread in his work. Save for Three Kings, a relative departure about George Clooney, Ice Cube, Mark Wahlberg and directing peer Spike Jonze attempting a bunker heist during the 1991 Iraqi uprising against Saddam Hussein, Russell's other films share a bond with Jason Schartzman's protagonist in I Heart Huckabees, a reserved yet talkative neurotic just like Ben Stiller in Flirting With Disaster and Jeremy Davies in Spanking the Monkey. It could be considered a signature of Russell's, not to say that Three Kings was a less personal film. This kind of frustrated male character befits Schwartzman, who puts on more edge here than most of his other roles, and Russell pits him with and against cocky objects of envy like Jude Law, whose chic nails his jock exec role, sagacious older fantastical characters like Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin's married existential detectives, a femme fatale facetiously played by Isabelle Huppert, a former student of Hoffman and Tomlin who espouses a seemingly opposing philosophy, Mark Wahlberg as an obsessively and sometimes violently anti- petroleum firefighter, and various sundry others.

Schwartzman's central character heads the local chapter of an environmental group, One of whose current projects is an attempt to stop the building of a new Huckabees store, a chain of big-box department stores akin to Wal-Mart or Target. Jude Law plays a shallow power executive there who infiltrates Schwartzman's environmental coalition and charmingly usurping him as the leader. After a strange, non-sequitary coincidence, Russell's protagonist contacts Hoffman and Tomlin. They offer him their optimistic brand of existentialism called universal interconnectivity, a sort of romantic or even transcendentalist philosophy, and spy on him, ostensibly to help him solve the meaning of the coincidence. They introduce him to Wahlberg, assigned as his "Other," a kind of counterpoint.

What makes it a good comedy is that there is personal struggle to be the humor's narrative foil. There is ideological clashing that comes incidentally as the film unfolds: Richard Jenkins slowly becomes hostile towards Schwartzman and Wahlberg in a heated political debate. Jenkins at one point says, "God gave us oil! He gave it to us! How can God's gift be bad?" "If Hitler were alive, he'd tell you not to think about oil." Jean Smart, Jenkins' wife: "You're the Hitler! We took a Sudanese refugee into our home!" "You did. But how did Sudan happen, ma'am? Could it possibly be related to dictatorships that we support for some stupid reason?" The scene has gone on and on this way beforehand. It's a rare thing in movies these days to see ideology pared down and clashing so deliberately and with a tongue unflappably in its cheek. Yet it's also not above silly non-sequitary gags, which tend to work just as well.

Made with home-grown visual effects, Jon Brion's easygoing Chamberlin-sampling score and an incredible cast that features early bit roles by Jonah Hill, Isla Fisher and cameos by Tippi Hedren and Shania Twain, this quirky introduction of existentialism to wide audiences is like a boundless device that absorbs all of the vigor it develops, saving its remaining assets to wrap itself up. This may be the first movie that can consist without an assembly amidst the projector and the screen. And maybe that aptly makes it a truly existential experience.