As enigmatic as its title, and funnier than it has any right to be, "I Heart Huckabees" is a frothy fizz of discourse and slapstick. In turns brilliant, pedantic, heady, exhausting, hilarious, cruel, trenchant, and incoherent, it succeeds more in its individual moments rather than in any sort of arc or summation. Its sheer audacity is matched only by the startling consistency with which it is able to depict, implicitly, the same ideas that it puts, explicitly, into the mouths of its characters.
This is not so much a movie as a treatise squeezed onto celluloid. Every character, every action, every detail typifies a philosophical point of view. In the world of "Huckabees," everything stands for something: the store is progress, the marsh and woods preservation; Albert is the young romantic idealist, Brad the vacuous, amoral pretty-person that we've all held in contempt; Albert and Catherine's ugly, sloppy sex in the dirt exemplifies the very meaningless that Catherine's philosopher espouses. Etc., etc., etc.
The filmmakers clearly want to put the tenuous balance between the explicable and the inexplicable, the rational and irrational, the yin and yang- or what have you -front and center. But, in striving to plot so much of the philosophical grid, they have also starved their film of any real emotional investment. More machine than man, the film exists to embody ideas and points of view, and this single-mindedness flattens-out everything else in its path.
The problem is, ideas alone are never as compelling as the people who believe them or, for that matter, as a strong story. To its credit, "Huckabees" seems to know better than to insist on telling one. Instead it creates, with its existential detectives, corporate denizens, and earnest public servants, a kind of intellectual pinball machine in which its ideas can be shot about to ricochet inside the helium-filled gasbag of its comedy. And there are pleasures to be had: a winning cast, smart laughs, a madcap pace, a buoyant Jon Brion score, some fanciful and funny visual digressions, and pop psychology countered by genuine insight. Best of all is the fresh air, too much missing from movies, of questions of meaning and existence.
Despite its qualities, though, the film falls short of its goals. In one brief but pivotal scene, a churchgoing family shares dinner with the two of the protagonists. The family's dedication and charity coexist with their reactionism and complicity; yes they have taken in a Sudanese refugee, but they have also co-opted him culturally. These Christians, like so much of everything in this film, are meant to be a contradiction, but, like the other characters, they do not resonate as real, identifiable persons. For everybody in "Huckabees" is pushed to extremes, beings made all and only of one thing. Of course, extremity is a requirement of comedy, but once they approach abstraction, extremes become unbelievable. So the humor in "Huckabees" comes from the taut interplay of its ideas, whereas its story and characters finally generate little more than a shrug.
How ironic that it should engender so much indifference, since apathy, of the intellectual variety, is precisely (and perhaps only) what "Huckabees" decries. Strange, too, that relationships are more or less left out of its equation; barely a passing mention is made of marriage, or family, or any kind of commitment that requires more than obligation or convenience and through which most of humanity forms its strongest bonds of meaning and belonging. In this way, the movie is like a brilliant philosopher who cries himself to sleep every night in an empty apartment. What good are the answers if they leave you alone and depressed? And what happens when we die? Is there a God? Though "I Heart Huckabees" is disciplined in its commitment to ideas, and smart enough to surround them in a sauce of comedy, it leaves too many troubling questions unasked. This omission makes it less ideologically complicated than it purports, and not as comforting as it pretends. For a movie that's so messy, it's still too neat.
"Huckabees" wants us each to look deep inside ourselves, embrace the infinite, and be fulfilled. It would replace consumerism with curiosity, ego with ideas, obliviousness with wonder. But, however much more admirable or preferable than the malaise of our present culture, this is really only superficially different. The pursuit of our own, individual fulfillment is, by any measure and by any name, a selfish one.
Some ideas surely are better than others. But life isn't the property of the abstract- not of only the mind or the body, or of love or even grace; no, a life belongs to a person. As hard as it tries, "Huckabees" is ultimately impersonal. But it does try, and is remarkable in its ambition, conviction, and density (how many movies warrant this kind of analysis?)- and for making it all so easy to take. Definitely not for the faint of brain, it fails on its own terms but should be celebrated regardless. For what it is, I heart "Huckabees."
This is not so much a movie as a treatise squeezed onto celluloid. Every character, every action, every detail typifies a philosophical point of view. In the world of "Huckabees," everything stands for something: the store is progress, the marsh and woods preservation; Albert is the young romantic idealist, Brad the vacuous, amoral pretty-person that we've all held in contempt; Albert and Catherine's ugly, sloppy sex in the dirt exemplifies the very meaningless that Catherine's philosopher espouses. Etc., etc., etc.
The filmmakers clearly want to put the tenuous balance between the explicable and the inexplicable, the rational and irrational, the yin and yang- or what have you -front and center. But, in striving to plot so much of the philosophical grid, they have also starved their film of any real emotional investment. More machine than man, the film exists to embody ideas and points of view, and this single-mindedness flattens-out everything else in its path.
The problem is, ideas alone are never as compelling as the people who believe them or, for that matter, as a strong story. To its credit, "Huckabees" seems to know better than to insist on telling one. Instead it creates, with its existential detectives, corporate denizens, and earnest public servants, a kind of intellectual pinball machine in which its ideas can be shot about to ricochet inside the helium-filled gasbag of its comedy. And there are pleasures to be had: a winning cast, smart laughs, a madcap pace, a buoyant Jon Brion score, some fanciful and funny visual digressions, and pop psychology countered by genuine insight. Best of all is the fresh air, too much missing from movies, of questions of meaning and existence.
Despite its qualities, though, the film falls short of its goals. In one brief but pivotal scene, a churchgoing family shares dinner with the two of the protagonists. The family's dedication and charity coexist with their reactionism and complicity; yes they have taken in a Sudanese refugee, but they have also co-opted him culturally. These Christians, like so much of everything in this film, are meant to be a contradiction, but, like the other characters, they do not resonate as real, identifiable persons. For everybody in "Huckabees" is pushed to extremes, beings made all and only of one thing. Of course, extremity is a requirement of comedy, but once they approach abstraction, extremes become unbelievable. So the humor in "Huckabees" comes from the taut interplay of its ideas, whereas its story and characters finally generate little more than a shrug.
How ironic that it should engender so much indifference, since apathy, of the intellectual variety, is precisely (and perhaps only) what "Huckabees" decries. Strange, too, that relationships are more or less left out of its equation; barely a passing mention is made of marriage, or family, or any kind of commitment that requires more than obligation or convenience and through which most of humanity forms its strongest bonds of meaning and belonging. In this way, the movie is like a brilliant philosopher who cries himself to sleep every night in an empty apartment. What good are the answers if they leave you alone and depressed? And what happens when we die? Is there a God? Though "I Heart Huckabees" is disciplined in its commitment to ideas, and smart enough to surround them in a sauce of comedy, it leaves too many troubling questions unasked. This omission makes it less ideologically complicated than it purports, and not as comforting as it pretends. For a movie that's so messy, it's still too neat.
"Huckabees" wants us each to look deep inside ourselves, embrace the infinite, and be fulfilled. It would replace consumerism with curiosity, ego with ideas, obliviousness with wonder. But, however much more admirable or preferable than the malaise of our present culture, this is really only superficially different. The pursuit of our own, individual fulfillment is, by any measure and by any name, a selfish one.
Some ideas surely are better than others. But life isn't the property of the abstract- not of only the mind or the body, or of love or even grace; no, a life belongs to a person. As hard as it tries, "Huckabees" is ultimately impersonal. But it does try, and is remarkable in its ambition, conviction, and density (how many movies warrant this kind of analysis?)- and for making it all so easy to take. Definitely not for the faint of brain, it fails on its own terms but should be celebrated regardless. For what it is, I heart "Huckabees."