I Heart Huckabees would be better off if it - were more funny and less depressed - were more considerate and less self-centered - paced itself better and loitered less - were more existentially heartfelt and less fussy and dramatic - had more Jessica Lange bathing suit stills - were lighter and less heavy - had more visual aid and less talky talky - were more inspirational and not so stuck in its own head - had more Isabelle Huppert character and less Dustin Hoffman Lily Tomlin characters - were more like it is when Mark Wahlberg and Jude Law are onscreen and everybody's talking over each other being existential-like - were more amusing and less grief-stricken - were fuller of life and less empty feeling - were more appreciative and less critical and so would I. I love I Heart Huckabees. It's an awesome movie and it's pretty hilarious and really good. David O. Russell's best work.(The meaning of life definitely has something to do with the feeling Shania gives blonde-haired Jude when he's telling people his Shania tuna fish story, or the feeling Naomi gives me when I see her posing bent over in her little baby blue shorts and sky blue top shooting her Huckabees commercial. Oh thank you sweet creator. Or something like that.)

There were a lot of different cool ideas going on in this film. It reminded me of if Collateral Beauty and Magnolia had a baby. Obviously, Collateral Beauty was....just embarrassingly bad. But this is what it was going for. Who am I? Am I defined by what I do? What is the meaning of life? Of bad things? Do they just happen? Do they mean nothing? What's the meaning behind coincidences? How will I ever be happy? How will I ever know my place? The film has a quirky and lighthearted way of delivering answers to these questions. It's not subtle. If you find that to be a negative, we can chalk that up to taste. Magnolia is an example of a film with a similar idea, but it was just much more subtle and took a lot longer. In Magnolia's attempt to show that some coincidences are random and some are not, the film by extension felt...kinda random and kinda not. I Heart Huckabees is short, concise, and jam packed with goodness. It's funny that some people who enjoyed this film still thought it was a mess, because I believe it knew exactly what it was doing. It was a delicately articulated and intentional mess. It's also interesting that people find this film to be pretentious, because it's quite the opposite. Exploring the questions it presents is not an easy task, and instead of sitting you down for three and a half hours and explaining the meaning of life to you, it does it through quirky comedy, and the unraveling of wacky characters that mimic us but are not the same as us trying to come to a conclusion, any conclusion. That's been me before. Maybe that's what it takes to like this film. Having "been there done that". Maybe there's no room to appreciate it if you simply can't relate. I've naturally come to the conclusion that life is a little bit of both, so I saw the twist coming. That didn't make the journey any less enjoyable for me. The daydream technique sequences, Brad and Albert's faces morphing together, the coincidence of two people being orphaned in completely different ways, characters continuously losing external things that they considered their identity, liking someone not for what they are but who they are, being a fraud, blaming everything bad that happens in the world on one thing, and finally, being connected through our pain. That's SO MANY IDEAS to try to put into one film. Sounds impossible to me. But, I Heart Huckabees pulled it off only by making it its own unique thing and doing it it's own way. Another lesson in its own. It was a grand and exuberant show from a distance, but all the little moments were more human and real than a lot of the more serious films I've seen. I do heart huckabees.

It had been ten years since I'd seen Huckabees and while the film hasn't changed my reaction to it certainly has. When I first saw the film I loved it. I loved how the message of the film was fairly simple but all the distracting double speak and psycho-babble made the film feel aloof and unapproachable. I was in my mid-twenties and I guess I was attracted to aloof and unapproachable. Now those same qualities in this particular context are somewhat annoying and feel pretentious for the sake of being pretentious. Not that this is bad movie by any stretch of the imagination but rather a movie made for a younger man by a younger man.Albert (Schwartzman) is having an existential crisis and hires a pair of existential detectives (Hoffman and Tomlin) to solve a coincidence. The detectives decide to pair up Albert with his "other" Tommy (Whalberg), to help him with his case. Tommy is a militant environmentalist/firefighter who plays a perfect contrast to Albert.The film has moments that are laugh out loud funny to why the hell would they do that disturbing. Most of the humor comes from how painful unaware the characters are of how they sound or appear and Mark Whalberg is especially gifted at saying imbecilic statements with pure conviction. I had forgotten how great he was in this movie. Most of the performances have a bit of a wink to them but not Whalberg, he plays the role completely straight and in turn steals scene after scene.The film tells us that it is about nothingness vs meaning and the struggle between the two. Is everything connected and meaningful or is existence just chaos with no connections or meaning? This can be a frustrating subject to turn around in your mind while you explore your own existence and watching a film maker struggle with the same questions is twice as frustrating.The moments of levity make the film easy to watch but the subject matter and tone didn't quite match up for me. With that being said I admire O Russell for making this film. It took guts to make such a unique film. While the film didn't hold up the way I expected I'm certainly glad it exists. I'm glad that I live in a world where thoughtful 20 somethings can discover this film and start to ask themselves the important questions. www.followingfilms.com

This film made me laugh, I'll say that first. However, I can't say I was a huge fan of the movie as a whole. Individual scenes, like the dinner scene with the African boy, were funny to watch, but the movie felt like it was rambling at times. The existentialist speech was laid on too heavy, particularly at the beginning of the movie, which I found confusing. This may have been the intent, but it did not help the movie in my opinion. Schwartzman was really good in this movie and I found Mark Wahlberg surprising funny as well as the biking fire fighter. Performances were what drove this movie for me. I also enjoyed the bit parts for the then up and coming Jonah Hill and Isla Fisher. I'd say check this film out