I © Huckabees
Directed by David O'Russell
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Isabella Huppert, Jude Law, David Schwartzman, Lily Tomlin, Mark Wahlberg, Naomi Watts
Running Time: 107 Minutes
Rated R
Fox Searchlight
Seen on 03/12/05
Review by Shawn Elmore

The Plot...
This ensemble comedy is about a married couple, the Jaffes (Hoffman, Tomlin), who work as detectives, helping people solve existential crises in their lives. For those not familiar with the philosophy-based term of "existential crisis", some examples of such a crises would be a "mid-life crisis", a "what am I doing with my life?" sort of hang up, "my life has been a mistake", "my whole life is a joke", etc. Their first client in this movie is Albert Markovski (Schwartzman), who is experiencing angst because of his position at Huckabee's, a popular chain of retail stores. Investigating his workplace, the Jaffes take on one of Albert's coworkers, Brad Stand (Law) as a client as well, which leads them to investigate his girlfriend, Dawn Campbell (Watts), who is the spokesmodel in the Huckabees TV commercials. Meanwhile, Albert teams up with an existential firefighter (Wahlberg) and a French radical (Huppert) out of frustration with the idea that the Jaffes are helping the very man who seems to be part of Albert's existential crisis. (Plot explanation courtesy of movies.yahoo.com)

My Review...
To sum it up shortly and then to elaborate...What. A. Trip. I was watching this and both scratching my head at times at it's wildness and still laughing my head off at it's fresh and hilarious comedy.

First, this cast, which is just sooooo huge. I am really debating my Ensemble award now. Everyone here was so unbelievably great. Even the weakest links (Schwartzman and Huppert) were near perfection. It's hard and almost impossible to pick a favorite between Hoffman , Law, Tomlin, Wahlberg, and Watts. Every single on of them so dang perfect. I was especially surprised by Naomi Watts though. She has great range and can do both sides of acting very well and I can't wait to see her win the Oscar one day.

David O'Russell is a person that I am not too familiar with, but I am now. This was a very well directed and wonderfully written comedy with so many great scenes. You have Tomlin and Hoffman french kissing, them running through a yard getting hit with sprinklers, a tremendously hilarious ensemble dinner table scene (with great cameos from Jean Smart and Richard Jenkins), an impossible to imitate scene between the detectives and Law and Watts. Just many great scenes which all make the laughter soar out.

Technically it was strong as well. Jon Brion is a genius. Plain and simple. The man revolutionized the scoring of movies in 2004 I think with both this and ESotSM. He now takes over my #1 spot for composer of the year. The film editing here was pretty tremendous as well.

In the long run, originality flew off the screen for me and it did so without being too confusing or crazily out there. A new entry into my top 10 and I will be buying this on DVD and I think it's one of those that will impress more and more with each viewing.

Grade for I © Huckabees: A-