firma_ment This is one of the most smug, annoying, vacuous movies I've ever seen. It seems as if it was made by a pretentious teenager who loves Wes Anderson movies and who likes to take well-thumbed copies of Sartre novels into Starbucks to try and impress people. The perfect vehicle, in other words, for a member of the extended Coppola brood, such as Jason Schwartzman, currently the most irritating purveyor of quirk on the silver screen. Does he try to be as smug and annoying as possible in all of his film roles, or does it just come naturally to him? If O. Russell didn't have the clout and connections to get this steaming pile of doo-doo made himself, it never would have gotten made. Any writer sending this script in to a production company would have found their script summarily tossed into the garbage, where it belongs.

Christopher Maynard It had been ten years since I'd seen Huckabees and while the film hasn't changed my reaction to it certainly has. When I first saw the film I loved it. I loved how the message of the film was fairly simple but all the distracting double speak and psycho-babble made the film feel aloof and unapproachable. I was in my mid-twenties and I guess I was attracted to aloof and unapproachable. Now those same qualities in this particular context are somewhat annoying and feel pretentious for the sake of being pretentious. Not that this is bad movie by any stretch of the imagination but rather a movie made for a younger man by a younger man.Albert (Schwartzman) is having an existential crisis and hires a pair of existential detectives (Hoffman and Tomlin) to solve a coincidence. The detectives decide to pair up Albert with his "other" Tommy (Whalberg), to help him with his case. Tommy is a militant environmentalist/firefighter who plays a perfect contrast to Albert.The film has moments that are laugh out loud funny to why the hell would they do that disturbing. Most of the humor comes from how painful unaware the characters are of how they sound or appear and Mark Whalberg is especially gifted at saying imbecilic statements with pure conviction. I had forgotten how great he was in this movie. Most of the performances have a bit of a wink to them but not Whalberg, he plays the role completely straight and in turn steals scene after scene.The film tells us that it is about nothingness vs meaning and the struggle between the two. Is everything connected and meaningful or is existence just chaos with no connections or meaning? This can be a frustrating subject to turn around in your mind while you explore your own existence and watching a film maker struggle with the same questions is twice as frustrating.The moments of levity make the film easy to watch but the subject matter and tone didn't quite match up for me. With that being said I admire O Russell for making this film. It took guts to make such a unique film. While the film didn't hold up the way I expected I'm certainly glad it exists. I'm glad that I live in a world where thoughtful 20 somethings can discover this film and start to ask themselves the important questions. www.followingfilms.com

classicsoncall There may be no other movie that better illustrates the absurd by being absurd. Dustin Hoffman as existential detective Bernard is classic, spewing utter nonsense that often sounds reasonable, but ultimately doesn't mean anything at all. Like my summary quote - in trying to analyze it, the line seems to be a profound comment on the absolute nature of mathematics. On the flip side, so what?The most distracting thing about this movie is that one is always a few moments behind the events occurring on screen contemplating what was said a mere few seconds ago. The dialog by Hoffman and Lily Tomlin doesn't allow you to come up for air most of the time, because you're either stymied or laughing hysterically at the nonsense. My point is not to make fun of existentialism, the movie does that well enough by itself. It skewers those deep thinkers who think they can come up with the secrets to the mystery of life in a neat, compact little package. Personally, I went through my own existentialist period while transitioning from high school to college, and it was as confusing a time for me as this picture.So forgive me for making this a short review. I'm going to transcend space and time here for a couple of minutes and get my bearings before I take a walk up to the lake and watch the sun set. Then maybe, just maybe, I'll watch this movie again.

Cineman17 Like he did with The Fighter, David O. Russel brings true talent out of an amazing cast of actors. Jason Schwartzman played his part perfectly, as did Mark Wahlberg and Dustin Hoffman. Naomi Watts, Jude Law, Kevin Dunn, Lily Tomlin and Isabelle Huppart all play wonderful supporting parts. There is even a scene with Jonah Hill and Richard Jenkins that is absolutely hilarious. This movie seriously had me laughing out loud at some parts, but at other times, it becomes hard to follow and pretentious. The film touches on some aspects of philosophy, but never really dives deep into them. This gives the audience a chance to reflect on what is being said and try to make sense of what the characters are doing. It is a cool film, but nothing really great stands out about it. Overall I Heart Huckabees just manages to scratch surface of what could have been a truly great film, and instead ends up being just a pretty good film with some really really great parts.