Huckabees has heart

When seething, stringy-haired activist Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) declares, "We're not in infinity! We're in the suburbs!" he cuts to the heart of I ♥ Huckabees, director David O. Russell's fast-talking, deep-thinking comedy in which characters butt heads over different views of the universe.

If life is meaningless, should environmentalists like Albert even bother to save local wildlife from the bulldozers of the Huckabees department store? Can Albert learn to find the common humanity he shares with soulless corporate flacks like his rival Brad Stand (Jude Law)? Despite a penchant for deadpan whimsy, I ♥ Huckabees pursues serious themes with surprising sincerity.

Early in the film, Albert makes his way through allegorical, mazelike corridors to an "existential detective agency" where businesslike Vivian (Lily Tomlin) and professorial Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) don't solve conventional mysteries like missing persons cases. They answer more profound riddles, like figuring out their clients' place in the natural order. Bernard urges Albert to appreciate the interconnectedness of all things, while Vivian puts their client under surveillance and becomes an amusingly incongruous presence in the film's background.

Albert hires the detectives to find out the identity of the towering "African guy" he keeps running into, but Bernard and Vivian quickly uncover the young man's more serious troubles. He heads an anti-sprawl group called Open Spaces, where Brad, a silver-tongued Huckabees sales executive, subtly undermines Albert's leadership. Bad enough that Huckabees, like Wal-Mart, callously paves over nature, but Albert also resents Brad's charisma, his money and his romance with Dawn (Naomi Watts), the store's spokesmodel.

Huckabees would risk cutesy overload if it only followed Albert's flailing efforts to control his life. But in Huckabees' most ingenious conceit, Russell gives Vivian and Bernard a nihilistic nemesis: Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), whose business card reads "Cruelty, Manipulation, Meaningless." She tempts the gumshoe gurus' clients toward an opposing philosophy of universal chaos. Like a tres chic demon who thwarts two optimistic angels, Caterine seduces Albert intellectually, then sexually. They copulate in primordial mud, suggesting that Albert's animal instincts distract him from the fight for the common good.

Caterine also sways cantankerous firefighter Tommy Corn (Mark Wahlberg) off the path of enlightenment and down a cul-de-sac of wasteful emotions. Tommy would rather rail pointlessly against the petroleum industry than maintain a healthy career or family life. In one of the film's imaginative visual flourishes, Bernard and Tommy debate over what's more significant: the tiny particles that make up and unify all matter, or the empty spaces between them.

Huckabees doesn't just keep its head in the clouds; the "real-world" plot finds modern relevance. Unlike most current attempts at classic screwball comedy, Huckabees talks fast because it has a lot to say. The film's rapid repartee fires broadsides against suburban sprawl, generic corporate culture and society's obsession with beauty and celebrity — all parts of the American mentality (or lack thereof).

Megastore homogeneity becomes part of the film's texture as chains like Staples and Home Depot frequently crowd into exterior shots. When spokesmodel Dawn, who coos over Huckabees' apparel in ubiquitous ads, suffers an identity crisis, she turns from a beloved, scantily clad sexpot into a mope in overalls and Amish bonnets. Salesman Brad dazzles Open Spaces' membership with his connection to country star Shania Twain and uses the borrowed glamour to hijack the group from Albert, suggesting that even the most dedicated idealist can be bought for a free T-shirt.

But for all the ideas crowding its head, Huckabees still has heart, and Russell cares about his confused, colliding characters. But he tends to put their internal struggles way out front, like the way Albert curses himself in self-hating interior monologues. The actors and audiences don't find quite as many charming little discoveries available in a similarly mind-bending Charlie Kaufman script. But only Law and Wahlberg have trouble keeping up with Huckabees' pace. When Brad discovers the emptiness of his go-go materialism, Law conveys a credible crack-up, but shows too much strain too soon.

Wahlberg merely seems petulant and never matches the poker-faced, barely contained pique that's second-nature to Schwartzman's engaging comic style. Imagine if the actor's multitasking Rushmore character fell in with eco-guerillas in college, and you get a sense of Albert's self-destructive drive. Hoffman and Huppert make ideal philosophical adversaries: He's so sloppily avuncular that you take comfort in his every word, and her sex-freckles and world-weary pessimism are hard to resist.

Though Russell sympathizes with the forces of order, I ♥ Huckabees never resolves the metaphysical grudge match between being and nothingness. Rather than provide definitive answers, the film finds persistent laughs in the search for meaning in an unknowable cosmos. In Huckabees' neatest trick, it manages to laugh with such efforts, not at them.

curt.holman@creativeloafing.com