By Robert Scucci
| Published
Feeling like life has no purpose, and that everything we do is for naught? Or perhaps, you’ve taken a more transcendental approach like Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) and Vivian Jaffe (Lily Tomlin) who would rather explore the concept of Universal Connectivity in I Heart Huckabees, the weirdest, brainiest, most existential screwball comedy drama you’ll ever feast your eyes upon.
Suggesting that nothing in life is a coincidence, and that our collective consciousness is made from the same star stuff as a toilet bowl or a child’s laughter, I Heart Huckabees takes you on a wild ride that aims to make you a more compassionate human being because according to the Jaffes, taking the nihilistic approach is the easiest way to ignore what’s really going on in the world.
Usurping The Open Spaces Coalition
Jason Schwartzman’s Albert Markovski, the leader of the Open Spaces Coalition, has devoted his entire adult life to preventing land from being corrupted by commercialism in I Heart Huckabees, and therein lies the conflict. At odds with Brad Stand (Jude Law), the ruthless executive of big box retailer Huckabees who co-opts the coalition for his own selfish gain, Albert’s role is effectively, and unceremoniously pushed aside.
Distressed over being usurped, and perplexed after seeing a series of inexplicable coincidences, Albert seeks out the Jaffes, a husband and wife working as existential detectives who aim to teach him how everything in life is connected. Disillusioned, and with nothing left to lose, Albert goes on guided meditations with the Jaffes, who connect him with Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), an existentially confused firefighter they’re also working with, as a means to help the two find clarity in their increasingly confusing lives in I Heart Huckabees.
Everything’s Connected
Tommy, feeling like he’s not seeing any progress in I Heart Huckabees, fires the Jaffes, preferring to work with Catherine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), a self-proclaimed nihilist whose teachings are in stark contrast to the Jaffe’s, who just so happen to be her former teacher. Finding himself corrupted by Tommy’s newfound sense of cynicism, Albert continues to search for meaning in his life, but his new partner in crime’s outlook is often too bleak to handle.
Meanwhile, Brad, having an existential crisis of his own at the top of the corporate ladder, hires the Jaffes to help him and his girlfriend Dawn (Naomi Watts), a model who earned her keep as the face of Huckabees in I Heart Huckabees, only for both of them to find out that their lives are meaningless.
Execution Is Everything
As convoluted as I Heart Huckabees may sound, everything is truly connected, which you find out as you gain more insight into each distinct and colorful character, who are all at odds with each other. Using an egregious amount of levity to get its point across, the heavy lifting in this film is flawlessly executed by Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin, who are the worst spies known to man, which is by design. Albert knew that they’d be keeping tabs on him the second he hired them, but their “spying” is so comically out in the open that you can’t help but laugh at Lily Tomlin’s face popping up in windows with a camera while Dustin Hoffman’s Bernard brazenly digs through everybody’s trash in broad daylight.
At first seeming like a distraction, the Jaffe’s behavior brings everything in I Heart Huckabees around full-circle because if there are no coincidences and everybody is part of the same collective consciousness, then their overt intrusion on everybody’s lives really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, so they might as well stay out in the open while everything falls apart and gets put back together again.
Streaming I Heart Huckabees
Completely off the wall, and packed to the gills with so much existential angst that you can’t help but laugh, I Heart Huckabees is profound but never pretentious, slap-stick silly but offset by its stunning sense of surrealism, and a brain-melter that will still somehow make your consciousness feel whole upon its conclusion. Searching for answers to life’s big questions with an impressive sense of narrative fluidity, I Heart Huckabees is most definitely a “thinker,” but transitions so seamlessly from one crisis to another that you’ll feel like you’re just another character in the story.
As of this writing, you can stream I Heart Huckabees on Hulu.
