Puzzled Pieces

CYCLE OF LIFE: Jason Schwartzman and Mark Wahlberg (left to right, front) pedal their way towards infinity.

Confounding, delightful, occasionally desperate, I Huckabees is an appropriately mixed bag.

by Sam Adams

In the way that the overstuffed sprawl of the Kill Bills felt like a direct outgrowth of Quentin Tarantino six-year quest, so David O. Russell's I Huckabees, his first feature since 1999's Three Kings, seems to be crammed with every idea he's had in the last five years. Luckily, most of them are good ideas, although even at a frenetic clip, the movie finally can't keep up with its creator. Perhaps it's the other way around.

There's no easy way to explain Huckabees' plot, but it starts with Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), an environmental activist bent on reclaiming "open spaces" from real-estate developers and corporations. In addition to vigorous leafleting, this entails the occasional poetry reading in a mall parking lot or a public park, whence this ode to a particularly noble stone: "You rock, rock! The rock just sits here, and that's what we need."

But expansion of a different kind is on Albert's mind. Obsessed with a series of chance encounters with an "African guy," he engages a pair of "existential detectives," Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) and Vivian (Lily Tomlin), to uncover the meaning of what he refers to as "my coincidence." Shaggy-haired Bernard, who not only admires René Magritte but seems to have taken decorating tips from him, swiftly explains to Albert that everything in the universe is connected, poking his fingers through a fuzzy blanket to illustrate how what seem to be discrete events are bound together in ways most people can't see. It's as if he's taken the fabric of the universe and made mittens out of it.

Unfortunately for Albert, Bernard's skill at seeing connections—he's in charge of philosophy, while Vivian seems to handle the legwork—allows him to see through the pretext of his client's visit. It's not coincidence that's eating Albert, but competition: specifically from Brad (Jude Law), the white-toothed, wavy-haired flack for the retail conglomerate Huckabees, which calls itself "the everything store." Under the guise of helping stage a joint benefit concert, Brad is steadily wresting control of the open spaces coalition away from Albert, who can't do much more than steam in response. You can't really blame the coalition's members for siding with Brad over Albert—after all, what would you rather listen to: eco-friendly poetry or the sounds of Brad's close, personal friend Shania Twain?

Brad and Vivian decide it might help Albert to meet someone even crazier than him, which is how Tommy (Mark Wahlberg with bedhead and fried-egg eyes) comes into the picture. A firefighter and long-term client, Tommy, as Bernard explains, "has been working with infinity since the big September thing." What's on his mind these days, though, is his daughter's shoes, which cost $1.98 because they were made by children her age in Indonesia. Given that his wife is in the process of leaving him, daughter on hip, this might not seem like the best time to address the cost of footwear, but Tommy can't seem to help himself. He's accepted the idea that everything is connected, and instead of bringing him clarity, it's driving him nuts.

Most comedy has a core of despair, and Huckabees' lies pretty close to the surface. You don't have to know that Russell was a political organizer before he was a filmmaker to feel Albert's genuine panic as the coalition he's built from scratch slips from his grasp, and it's hard to miss Three Kings' pointed critique of the oil industry's undue influence on American foreign policy poking out from behind Tommy's obsession with petroleum products. And then, of course, there's "the big September thing," which subtly underwrites Huckabees' frenetic search for meaning—as well as its characters' pressing urge to disconnect from the world, which they indulge by smacking themselves in the face with a rubber ball until they can't think straight.

Serious subtext notwithstanding, Russell and his co-screenwriter, Jeff Baena, seem determined never to go too long without a laugh, which forces them into a few foolish corners. Initially squandered as the apple-cheeked "face of Huckabees," Naomi Watts struggles with a role that eventually forces her to don an Amish bonnet and smear chocolate in her teeth, although the greatest indignities are visited upon Isabelle Huppert, an existential detective-turned-nihilist (and author of the best-selling If Not Now …) who ends up in a muddy menage with Schwartzman in the movie's most painfully forced scene.

Russell doesn't have the take-no-prisoners heart of a true farceur, or Woody Allen's gift for intellectual absurdism, so the best he can do is space out the Big Ideas with the occasional spurt of awkward slapstick, following every philosophical musing with a whack in the face. After a nearly pitch-perfect first hour, Huckabees grows jagged, unsteady, as if the closer Russell gets to his grand conclusions, the less comfortable he is stating them. He lacks the courage of his pretensions.

I Huckabees Directed by David O. Russell A Fox Searchlight release Opens Friday at Ritz Five

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