Rating of
1.5/4
"I Heart Huckabees" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 03/18/12
Would-be eco warrior Jason Schwartzman approaches an existential detective agency to solve his life crisis and meets a series of odd balls on a journey of self discovery. David O. Russell's surreal comedy certainly has a very impressive cast, and its attempt at mocking society's obsession with self help and hypocritical moral outrage certainly sounds good. Unfortunately none of the promise shown by the idea is realised; the whole film seemed to me to be just as pretentious and self indulgent as Schwartzman's "poetry". It doesn't really seem to make any coherent points at all, just the usual mix of forced kookiness and self-absorbed naval gazing I've come to expect from this kind of indie comedy and the whole thing whiffed of the faint aroma of bullshit it seemed to be accusing self-help gurus of. It kept me watching because of the cast, but the humour was obvious and often unfunny and it fell to Mark Wahlberg of all people to salvage the film for me, as his performance seemed the most honest and amusing. But the bottom line is that it just isn't very funny.
