I Heart Huckabees

I Heart Huckabees

As far as I can decipher, the film seems to be a battle between two ways of thought.

  1. That we are all connected in the universe, I to you, you to me, me to this keyboard, this keyboard to a cantaloupe, etc. That such a profound connection means that there are no coincidences in the universe.
  2. That nothing means anything and life is only a series of unlinked cruel or happy meetings of chance.

I think you can tell that we’re not dealing with a Rob Schneider film here.

I have had limited experience with 'existential' films, or in fact existentialism at all. I myself am not predisposed to such whimsically philosophical fits of contemplation. In fact, usually I loathe it – having put up with too many undergraduate wankers overanalysing everything in intellectual pissing contests over my university years.

But let’s stick to existential films for the moment. Linklater’s Waking Life was a purposefully dream-like rambling over questions and theories of life, love and existence, but the trippy visuals couldn’t even disguise that half the conversations weren’t nearly as interesting as intended, at least for me they weren't. David O Russell’s I Heart Huckabees lightens the tone of such ponderings significantly in his ambitious attempt to make an 'existential comedy', and for the most part he succeeds – at least at the comedy part.

The main character played by Jason Schwartzman (as great here as he was in Rushmore), goes to a pair of existential detectives to help him solve a coincidence in his life that has his puzzled. Much amusement comes from Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman’s ever present detectives, who follow their client around searching for clues, and for whom no action is void of meaning. Both are great here.

Even so, things don’t feel like they really get going until Mark Whalberg enters as an aggressive firefighter whose passionate hatred for petroleum provides many hysterical highlights. The friendship his and Schwartzman's characters strike up as they search for their answers rightly becomes the focus of the film and Whalberg, who has never really won me over before, steals every second of screen time he has. There is little limelight left then for the supporting cast to shine in, but Jude Law (who plays smug a little too well), and Naomi Watts (who doesn’t really get a word until the second half of the film), are both solid as a corporate tool and his model girlfriend (the “face” of Huckabees department store) respectively.

I must confess I was left a bit confused about exactly what was meant to be funny and what were serious trains of thought here, as I Heart Huckabees seems to be pulling the piss out of existentialism even as it endorses it. Of course there is quite a lot to joke about when dealing with such topics, and a dinner the two friends share with a typical all-American patriotic family and the ensuing argument is a hilarious highlight among many.

Now a lot of the peripheral plot, something about an environmental group that’s been infiltrated by Law’s corporate executive tool, didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Neither did the significance of the Huckabee’s department chain, which makes me think I am probably missing a great hunk of the meaning of the film (unless it really is as simple as a capitalist VS socialist thang…or something). However at the center of the film is a man’s search for meaning in his life, his quest for confirmation that his life has purpose and a connection to something greater than himself (1.). Of course it takes for him to be pushed to the brink of total nihilism (2.) before he can see and accept that these connections are already present, even if it is in those around him that he despises – or such was my interpretation of events. I failed Pretentious Philosophical Bullshit 101 at uni so I really wouldn’t know for sure.

What I do know is that while I Heart Huckabees didn’t have me pondering my existence, it did have me laughing quite a lot, proving that you do not necessarily have to understand something to enjoy it.

A bit like life itself, isn’t it?

Hey, that’s pretty deep stuff. Maybe I should give a few of my old uni friends a call…this revelation may just blow their minds…