By Diana Lee LaBrecque
Generally, in real life, if someone has a problem they talk to a friend or perhaps a therapist to get an unbiased opinion. Well, in ‘I Heart Huckabees’ we meet a whole plethora of individuals who have problems-but then decide to hire existential private detectives to solve their issues for them.
The co-founders of Existential Detectives are an offbeat married couple. This couple is played by The Graduate’s Dustin Hoffman and Beverly Hillbillies’ Lily Tomlin, who together have become more charming and subtly gifted actors with time.
Their office is visited by individuals searching for answers about the bigger picture, the purpose of life, the meaning behind coincidences and how to be mentally and spiritually satisfied. Jason Schwartman (Rushmore), Jude Law (slowly taking over the world), Mark Wahlberg (Italian Job) and Naomi Watts (The Ring) play the lost clients who visit the office. All very familiar, amazing actors who after this film, deserve to be in the spotlight with a few supporting-role Oscar nods.
Schwartman plays an offbeat environmentalist poet who, after seeing the same tall African man in three different places, is searching for meaning in his recurring disturbing coincidences. He also has beef with a corporate representative, played by pretty-boy Law, who assists him in saving a wetlands space.
The rep is trying to climb the corporate ladder of Huckabees (a bigger and better Macy’s), and doesn’t realize his life is based on his farce sales persona until the Existential Detectives show him that his life is quite empty when he stops telling his one interesting anecdote about Shania Twain and tuna fish.
His girlfriend is played by Watts, who turns in her freaky shrieking voice for Dumb Blond 101. She plays the Huckabees spokesmodel and only knows how to be and act the way people want her to.
The Detectives help her realize who she really is inside and out; it includes a bonnet and baggy-overalls. She finds true love when she meets Wahlberg’s character: a firefighter who prefers to ride a bicycle to fires and lecture strangers about the world’s dependency on petroleum and the unfinished business concerning 9/11.
This fun-loving group get together and try to follow the lessons that the paid Detectives theorize by listening to each of their every sounds and watching their every steps.
The Detectives follow two main existential theories: “There’s nothing too small. If we might see you floss or masturbate that could be the key to your entire reality” and “Say this blanket represents all the matter and energy in the universe…this is me, this is you and over here, this is the Eiffel Tower, this is an orgasm and this is a hamburger.”
David O. Reilly created a color scheme that flows throughout the film that matches the theme of existential existence. He used very stark and bland colors that parallel with the film’s traditional style. The color palette stayed consistent with hi key lighting, not a lot of shadows, and there was also barely any red and green colors so the idea of hope and energy was always hiding from the characters.
The characters were surrounded by a world filled with a lack of color, just like their respective worlds were filled with a lack of life and answers. The costumes were very clean cut and very polished to each of the character’s personalities.
The most pleasing and intriguing visual imagery that Huckabees produces is when the film enters one of the characters’ psyche and it is being deconstructed and analyzed. Large to tiny microscopic pieces of the frame will roll over one another as the characters realize their connectedness to one another. The graphic effects assist in the existential theory that we are all part of one another in the inside and out, and the smallest part of ourselves is vital because it is connected to a bigger part of someone else.
This film has been described as the most original, existential comedy of the year that answers the questions that wake us up in the middle of the night. The fact that this storyline is told by a series of spectacular, talented and beautiful (in the inside and out) actors only makes it more pleasing and captivating to watch. It’s worth the time and the money to find out what everyone’s infinite nature is all about.
Final Grade: A-
´I Heart Huckabees´ features an amazing all-star cast and is one of the most originalcomedies of the year. (Image Courtesy movies.yahoo.com)