Today it's I ♥ Huckabees...
Wanting to discover what a random coincidence in his life means, environmental campaigner Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) employs a pair of "Existential Detectives" (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) to dig into his life and hopefully uncover what it all means. Albert also has to deal with the seemingly happy but secretly repressed employees of the local department store Huckabees, and a drop-out fireman worried about the USA's dependency on oil.

It's still a strange little film with a sub-Charlie Kaufman story, but there's still a lot to enjoy. Schwartzman's Albert is an appealing central character, even when he's placed in some rather bizarre and trippy sequences. The sight of Jude Law in a ladies wig was odd enough, but to show Schwartzman literally drinking milk from his breast was an experience I wouldn't care to share. There's also the constant threat of Shania Twain showing up, which frankly, is chilling.

Russell's Three Kings and The Fighter star Mark Wahlberg turns up as Tommy, an on leave firefighter struggling to deal with the aftermath of 9/11. Referred to in the film as "the big September thing", one wonders if this entire film is David O. Russell's reaction and way of dealing with his own existential crisis, post 9/11. Wahlberg's character continually harps on about the evils of oil dependency and the lengths the American Government will go to ensure its future stability; the subtext is pretty clear, and the director and writers' personal opinion on the matter is obvious. Not that this isn't an important topic, but Russell might as well have placed Wahlberg on a soapbox whilst he delivered his lines.

I Heart Huckabees has gained a degree of infamy in the last couple of years, thanks to a couple of widely distributed video clips of director David O. Russell and actor Lily Tomlin engaging in a rather impolite exchange of words during filming. There's some dispute as to whether it's real or not (it looks pretty real to me, and if not it's a terrible way to publicise a film), but either way it puts the film's hippie love-in optimism into a whole new light.
I ♥ Huckabees is far from a complete success, and there's plenty of parts to the film that just make no sense at all. The pop psychology is largely incoherent, and I can't say I was too bothered by Jude Law and Naomi Watts' strand of the film. However, they are needed to complete all the pieces in the puzzle, even when the conclusion probably leaves you with more questions than you started with. In a similar fashion to some of the character's methods of enlightenment, Huckabees often hammers you over the head with its message, but it's an admirable reaction to the traditional American way of life and the need to change their approach in a 21st Century world.
So what's it all about? Honestly, I'm not particularly any closer to an answer, but at least it was fun along the way.
Save from obscurity? YES.
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