10.31.04
Movie Review: I (Heart) Huckabees

Is every personal interaction and encounter fraught with meaning? Or is the world just completely random and cruel?

The always underused Jason Schwartzman returns in a starring role as an environmental activist and horrible poet doing battle with discount store exec and all-round corporate asshole type Jude Law, when a series of coincidences causes him to start questioning the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything. To that end he hires the husband and wife “existential detective” team of Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin.

Whenever the story gets too deeply into its pseudo-deep, pseudo-philosophical ideas, it’s pretty bad (the line about the “spiritual petit fors” was particularly irritating); but it works pretty well as a farce, especially when Schwartzman is interacting with conspiracy theory-prone firefighter Marky Mark Wahlberg.

Eventually, the film comes to the conclusion that life is neither fraught with meaning at every encounter and interaction; nor is it completely random and cruel. Which isn’t really any kind of conclusion at all. But, it’s sort of sweetly funny, and evaporates from your mind shortly after having consumed it. Call it an existential apéritif.