I ♥ Huckabees (2004)

Excellent but underrated film

Admirable film.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There were a lot of different cool ideas going on in this film. It reminded me of if Collateral Beauty and Magnolia had a baby. Obviously, Collateral Beauty was....just embarrassingly bad. But this is what it was going for. Who am I? Am I defined by what I do? What is the meaning of life? Of bad things? Do they just happen? Do they mean nothing? What's the meaning behind coincidences? How will I ever be happy? How will I ever know my place? The film has a quirky and lighthearted way of delivering answers to these questions. It's not subtle. If you find that to be a negative, we can chalk that up to taste. Magnolia is an example of a film with a similar idea, but it was just much more subtle and took a lot longer. In Magnolia's attempt to show that some coincidences are random and some are not, the film by extension felt...kinda random and kinda not. I Heart Huckabees is short, concise, and jam packed with goodness. It's funny that some people who enjoyed this film still thought it was a mess, because I believe it knew exactly what it was doing. It was a delicately articulated and intentional mess. It's also interesting that people find this film to be pretentious, because it's quite the opposite. Exploring the questions it presents is not an easy task, and instead of sitting you down for three and a half hours and explaining the meaning of life to you, it does it through quirky comedy, and the unraveling of wacky characters that mimic us but are not the same as us trying to come to a conclusion, any conclusion. That's been me before. Maybe that's what it takes to like this film. Having "been there done that". Maybe there's no room to appreciate it if you simply can't relate. I've naturally come to the conclusion that life is a little bit of both, so I saw the twist coming. That didn't make the journey any less enjoyable for me. The daydream technique sequences, Brad and Albert's faces morphing together, the coincidence of two people being orphaned in completely different ways, characters continuously losing external things that they considered their identity, liking someone not for what they are but who they are, being a fraud, blaming everything bad that happens in the world on one thing, and finally, being connected through our pain. That's SO MANY IDEAS to try to put into one film. Sounds impossible to me. But, I Heart Huckabees pulled it off only by making it its own unique thing and doing it it's own way. Another lesson in its own. It was a grand and exuberant show from a distance, but all the little moments were more human and real than a lot of the more serious films I've seen. I do heart huckabees.

I watched this movie in my English class to learn a little more about existentialism along with reading the book the stranger I am only a senior in high school and completely understood this movie as strange and abstract as it maybe i have a few ideas for a thesis on a paper I am writing using the movie and the book: Ultimately you can only fix your own problems but together you can fix the world. People only care when there is a problem. When you betray others you betray yourself. In order to be successful you must be liked by society. Repeating yourself to get your point across only leads to insanity. You only realize what you had after you lose it all. Pain exist in the past and in the future but if you live day by day you can be completely indifferent and emotionless.Those are my ideas so far.

Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) is a philosophical poet always doing strange things for his causes. He finds a business card for Vivian Jaffe, Existential Detective. He can't believe it and hires Vivian (Lily Tomlin) and her husband Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) to investigate himself. He wants a greater meaning.This is a very strange movie. Are we suppose to laugh at these characters? When people in the real world start talking like this, I can't help but roll my eyes. That what I feel about this movie. I can't help but roll my eyes at all the philosophical talk. It's horribly unfunny. However with all the recent success of director David O. Russell, I figure I give it another watch. I still don't get what the F people like about this movie. I'm tempted to go even lower with my vote, but this movie doesn't annoy me as much as it eludes me.

This was the worst piece of crap that I have ever seen. It's not funny and it poses no philosophical thought worth having. It has no message, no answers, and stupid questions. Oh and again, it's not funny.Of course existentialism is stupid in itself really because it poses questions that have no answers and if followed could lead a man to complete insanity and the only people who really grapple with existential questions are extremely sad, lost, confused, and sometimes (dare I say it?) even pathetic people. This was actually explained briefly in this horrible piece of sh*t movie, where they connected his confusion and self-betrayal to the cat story.David O. Russel struck out on this one. He's made several good movies. This movies isn't one of them.I am very angry as I wasted my Thursday night on this f*cking piece of crap.F*ck you, David Russel.