The Sandspur

Issue date: 10/29/04 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: FLAWLESS2.FREE.FR HUCKABEES: This existentialist comedy may overthink its humor a bit too much.

Existentialism. Does not sound so funny, does it? It sounds more like a book for your philosophy class than the premise of a movie. Yet in the new intellectual comedy "I [heart] Huckabees, existentialism is the main focus. While it is often bogged down in pedantic philosophic jargon, the movie is still somewhat funny on higher intellectual levels of comedy. (Read: There are no puppets blowing things up. Sorry.)

The film is directed by David O. Russell (Anchorman) and features an all star cast: Jude Law (Artificial Intelligence: AI), Naomi Watts (The Ring), Mark Wahlberg (Boogie Nights), Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man), Lily Tomlin (Orange County), and Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore). Albert Markovski (Schwartzman), an environmentalist, is the director of the Open Space Coalition, an organization dedicated to preserving the environment's open spaces. The Coalition is protesting the destruction of marshland by Huckabees ('The Everything Store', a la Walmart), and only manages to save a single large rock. This is not surprising considering the Open Spaces protest technique: poetry, specifically, Albert's terrible poetry. (And planting trees in the Huckabees parking lot. "I'm making a statement for open spaces," Albert explained.)

Brad Stand [Law], a swarmy sales representative, sees the restoration of the marsh as a marketing opportunity for Huckabees, and approaches Albert with a proposition to work alongside the corporation. While the coalition sees the corporate sponsorship as a positive alternative to appalling poetry, Albert is disgruntled. Through a series of seemingly connected coincidences, Albert finds the existential detectives, the Jaffeys [Hoffman, Tomlin]. He engages them to work thorough his existential crisis and, more specifically, to solve the series of coincidences and to understand their significance in his life. The methods the Jaffeys employ are quirky and invasive, providing many bright spots of pure comedy. They follow his every move, and introduce him to the basics of existentialism, "Everything is the same, even if it's different." Eventually their idiosyncratic spying spreads to every facet of Albert's life, inevitably creating chaos and mayhem everywhere Albert goes.

Continued...

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