Some movies need to be reviewed in terms of their college-ness. David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees, which has the audacity to laud itself as “an existential comedy,” must be evaluated by a specific set of criteria: Namely, is I Heart Huckabees 1) A cult classic speaks to the college lifestyle? 2) Endlessly quotable in a variety of irrelevant contexts? 3) As a character-driven movie that references both “nihilism” and “infinite nature,” how does Huckabees compare to the ultimate college film: The Big Lebowski.
Huckabees is loose on plot and can be generically summarized as the story of Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), an aspiring poet who runs an activist group called Open Spaces. He tries to prevent suburban development, and, in his failure, becomes so concerned with the meaning of life that he hires a pair of existential detectives to investigate him. Vivian and Bernard Jaffe, played by Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman, go about figuring out why Markovski exists. Several side characters, linked in and around the detective agency and the conglomerate that Albert is fighting-a Walmart-like store called Huckabees-have competing philosophical perspectives that clash in a variety of sometimes-funny, mostly-not moments.
Bizarre characters dominate the movie. Mark Wahlberg is excellent as Albert’s friend, a fireman so obsessed with the environmental and political implications of gasoline that he rides his bike to the fires. In one dinner scene Wahlberg has a fantastic diatribe about the incompatibility of petroleum and Christianity. The other extreme is Jude Law, who plays a Huckabees executive that supports Albert’s cause in order to climb the corporate ladder. His terrible American accent nearly ruins the film and is the aural embodiment of his entire poor performance. He’s the only actor that can’t engage in the film’s weirdness.
A college critique of Huckabees begins with applicability. How can the movie answer questions about the random pointlessness of classes and binge drinking? Lebowski has enough meditative complexity to last a lifetime, and Huckabees’s schizophrenic pace and plethora of scenarios make it a good candidate for a college classic. The film offers a variety of philosophic insights, but these situations are overly contrived. Hoffman’s character has several Buddhist monologues about oneness, accented with a few abstract special effects. But these give the film a kind of Sesame Street effect: You’re getting duped into learning. It’s one thing when the Count’s counting, but another when a French woman is half-assing Sartre.
The second relevant category is quotability. The Big Lebowski is the cornerstone of any advanced college lexicon. I Heart Huckabees has some good moments that poignantly capture the absurd. In one scene, Vivian asks Schwartzman’s character, “Have you ever transcended space and time?” to which he replies, “Uh, time … not space … No … I don’t know what you’re talking about.” This was incredible in the theater; Jason Schwartzman’s timing is perfect. But does this stand out in my printed review? Are you laughing out loud? Unlike Lebowski’s “These men are nihilists, Donny. They won’t hurt you,” it just doesn’t resonate.
Though it has its moments, it can be safely predicted that I Heart Huckabees won’t live on in the hearts and minds of college students. The film is both strange and ridiculous, but not absurd or existential enough to initiate meaningful dialogue about the college experience. Russell could have used a little more advice from the Dude: “Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you.” Is that even advice? Perfectly irrelevant.
