| Product: |
I Heart Huckabees (Sell Through) (VHS) |
| Date: |
04.12.05 (649 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: hilarious, surreal & sometimes just mad! The script, the acting and the originality of it all.
Disadvantages: The basic concept is a bit way out.
I Heart Huckabees is possibly the oddest, craziest most offbeat film that you are ever likely to see. It is advertised as an ‘Existentialist Comedy’; whatever that is supposed to mean! A comedy it certainly is, the script is just packed with superb lines, wonderfully weird characters and decidedly offbeat situations. There are so many wonderful quotes I would love to pepper this review with but to do so could only ruin them for anyone who sees the film. Just take my word for it the script sparkles with one-liners!
*Existential = Of, relating to or dealing with existence*
The basic plot of Huckabees is about Albert (Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore, Spin) the head of the Open Spaces Coalition, an organisation that attempts to save open spaces, to stop them being built on. He has bumped into the same tall black man on three separate occasions and, for some reason, wants to know why this coincidence has occurred and what it means in his life.
He discovers a card for ‘Jaffe and Jaffe, existentialist detectives’ that promises ‘Crisis Investigation and Resolution’ and heads off to see them. Having negotiated his way through the maze of corridors to the Jaffe’s office he meets and then employs the two of them (Lily Tomlin & Dustin Hoffman) and their incredibly strange techniques to investigate his life and the coincidence.
Meanwhile Brad (Jude Law – Alfie, Sky Captain), a slimy corporate climber at the Huckabees corporation (A multi branch, big department store along the lines of John Lewis/Debenhams), has his own plans for the Open Spaces Coalition. He is working in tandem with Albert so that both organisations get what they want, or is he?
Also involved in the proceedings are Dawn (Naomi Watts – 21 Grams, Mulholland Drive) as the spokesmodel for Huckabees and Brads girl, Tommyh (Mark Wahlberg – Three Kings, Boogie Nights) a fire fighter who is going through a crisis over the use of petroleum in the world and with the Jaffe’s procedures and finally the Jaffe’s ‘enemy’ and opposition, Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert)
Vauban’s card reads ‘Cruelty, Manipulation and Meaninglessness’ and while the Jaffes believe everything and everyone are connected in some way and that whatever you do has an effect somewhere she believes that nothing effects anything and that there are no connections. You can do whatever you want with no consequences.
The story, very basically, follows how all these characters interact with each other and how they are affected by their involvement with the existential detectives.
The director/writer David O Russell (Three Kings, Spanking The Monkey, Flirting With Disaster) has certainly packed a lot into this, and I would guess that a lot if it is close to his heart. Huckabees contains conflicting theories on existentialism (I guess, it was over my head!), statements on the environment, corporate greed and the ever-growing consumer society and even about the banality of everyday life and how it can grind you down being someone you’re not because you have to be to fit in (something I certainly don’t agree with!)
But as much as there are all these serious themes running throughout the Huckabees the focus is on the screwball comedy. Comedy is rampant throughout from the seriously funny Jaffes through to Tommy and Albert meeting the tall black guys family. From the transformation of Dawn to Tommy continually going on about petroleum.
Huckabees is extremely funny, you may not get all the philosophical stuff floating around, and sometimes by the use of special effects it is literally floating around, but it doesn’t matter. This doesn’t really effect the enjoyment of the film. There is enough there to not have to worry too much about all the deeper stuff.
The cast of top stars are all on the top of the game here as well. Jason Schwartzman plays the odd, superior loner once again, Jude Law is fantastic as Brad, Naomi Watts once again shows how versatile she can be but the star is Mark Wahlberg. I’ve never been impressed by him in the slightest but here he is superb as Tommy. He plays him with a perfect balance between manic protestor and little boy lost. I’ll be interested in seeing what he does next, will he revert to Hollywood mainstream and revert to blandness or will he stretch himself once again?
You also have to visit the websites for the film. They have cleverly set up three sites to do with the organisations involved. There is one for the Jaffes, one for Huckabees and one for Open Spaces all three of which are worth a chuckle or two.
www.huckabees.com
www.jaffeandjaffe.com (with a great questionnaire!)
www.open-spaces.org
The boring stuff!
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 106 minutes
Director: David O Russell
Main Cast:
Jason Schwartzman – Albert Markovski
Jude Law – Brad Stand
Naomi Watts – Dawn Campbell
Mark Wahlberg – Tommy Corn
Lily Tomlin – Vivian Jaffe
Dustin Hoffman – Bernard Jaffe
Isabelle Huppert – Caterine Vauban
Summary: You'll be laughing so much you'll forget the madness of the whole idea!
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