I have some not good news for you...
Look, this isn't going to be easy for you to hear and I think the best thing I can do is just come out and say it: I *Heart* Huckabees isn't a great film. Sorry, dude. Yeah, I know, it's a bummer. I expected to be mind-blown, too.

Don't get me wrong, I *Heart* Huckabees is good. It's good in a 2.5-stars kind of way. I laughed when I saw it and I enjoyed some of the performances; I really wanted to love it and some scenes are great... but it feels like director David O. Russel saw The Royal Tennenbaums, Being John Malkovich and Fight Club, and then decided to make a madcap comedy.

In addition to K-Mart...
Madcap sucks. There is a reason John Candy is dead and Steve Martin would be better off joining him. We're too smart and cynical for madcap humor these days. We've got "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" now, and we're better off.

The plot of Huckabees is clever and original, yet somehow clichéd. (only in a film about existentialism is this possible!) Jason Schwartzman plays Albert Markovski, a poem-writing environmentalist (*cough*The Young Ones*cough*) who is losing the leadership in his "Open Space" organization to a corporate sell-out stereotype played by Jude Law. An eery coincidence leads Albert to visit existential detectives (played by Dustin Hoffman and Lilly Tomlin). Through repetitive scenes composed of uninspired writing, the existential detectives teach Albert about life. And Albert teaches them a little about life too! (How fucking quaint.)

Humor? I don't even know her!
The humor in "Huckabees" is hit-and-miss. Ultimately, the style is too Lilly Tomlin and not enough Jason Schwartzman. The best two scenes are the two that are the least gimick-heavy and the most truthful. David O. Russell is by no means a hack director, and he does shine in places.

Unfortunately, for most of the film, you get the feeling that half the cast doesn't know anything about the philosophies the movie deals with, and they make up for their lack of understanding by being goofy.

I had a nice time watching I *Heart* Huckabees; it's a swell little flick. If you're a nut for David O. Russel or Jason Schwartzman, you ought to see it in the theatre... but otherwise, you really can wait for video. I mean, it's all the same blanket of space and time anyways, right?