What a very odd film this is. Still, I get to do crazy CSS in order to display the title properly – i ♥ huckabees – see!
But then it was no great surprise, this was always going to be an odd film as it follows Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), a environmentalist who doesn’t know whether to just give it all up or to keep fighting to save the swamp. He goes to the existential detectives – Bernard (Dustin Hoffmann) and Vivian (Lily Tomlin) to try and answer his big questions, and also solve his co-incidence, involving a tall african.
Jude Law, Naomi Watts, and Mark Wahlberg pleasingly finish off the cast, and it must be said the casting was just brilliant. Namoi Watts as Dawn was particularly good, especially her existential agnst phase.
However, this was not a film without flaws – firstly the language was pretty unnecessary, the opening 2 or 3 minutes basically being a tirade of swear words going on inside Albert’s head, and pretty well set the theme in terms of language content. I also thought it was trying to be too clever by half, and failed to either raise the big questions of life or even shed any sort of insight into them. Perhaps I’m being too harsh – it is a very funny film (if you’re into existential humour). I especially like the way you are drawn into thinking that the utterly odd behaviour of the “enlightened” is understandable – normal even, until other minor characters react against it and you realise that 90% of the film is on another planet.
So while I feel that I didn’t waste my 1.99 in hiring it, I wouldn’t rush out to buy it.