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Joey Box,
Tom Dewier,
Sean Graham,
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David O. Russell,
David O. Russell
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: 20th Century Fox
: Comedies
: English, Spanish
: English, Spanish
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Five years after achieving commercial and critical success with his film Three Kings, director and screenwriter David O. Russell returns to the more idiosyncratic territory of his earlier work with this intelligent and offbeat comedy. Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) are a married couple who run an existential detective agency where they sift through the lives of their clients in order to discover the source of their angst. The Jaffes' latest client is Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), an environmental activist who has a very large rock and a great deal on his mind; their study of Albert's problems lead Bernard and Vivian to Brad Stand (Jude Law), a public relations executive with a chain of successful variety stores, Huckabees. While publicly allying himself with Albert's environmental initiatives, behind the scenes Brad is running roughshod over responsible land management with little care for the consequences. When Brad learns he's being watched by the Jaffes, he hopes to co-opt them by hiring them himself; however, the plan has unexpected consequences when their questioning leads Brad's girlfriend, well-scrubbed model Dawn (Naomi Watts), into reassessing her life and relationships. Meanwhile, Albert finds himself joining forces with Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), a firefighter and fellow environmentalist who has been having second thoughts about Bernard and Vivian's ideas and methods after a long-term investigation and has since fallen under the spell of nihilist poet and philosopher Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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| Nothingness
by ETeller
July 3, 2005 - 1:03 PM PDT
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3 out of 8 members found this review helpful
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| I was looking forward to seeing "I Heart Huckabees." Top tier actors, exploring philosophy and I was impressed by David Russell's "Three Kings." What I found was superficial and abhorant. One dimensional characters representing shallowness grandstanding pride in Jude Law's character, Bad Stand; frivolous identification with outer image and presentation in Naomi Watts character, Dawn Campbell; erratic, mystical activity and pronouncements by Dustin Hoffman's charcter, Bernard; and so forth. Philosophy is similarly treated in a incoherent and simplistic manner. |
| Do the Right Thing! Uh...How?
by talltale
February 18, 2005 - 6:30 AM PST
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10 out of 11 members found this review helpful
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Who'd have imagined you could make a movie built all around philosophy? But that's what David O. Russell has done, wonderfully well, in I HEART HUCKABEES. The film flies by so fast and funny that by laughing you just know you're going to miss something great. You do, but so what? You can rewind and watch that moment again. At bottom, there's seriousness here for anybody who has ever tried to come to terms with life today and its contradictions, resulting in that unanswerable question: How do I do the right thing (and what IS it, anyway)? The scenes that capture this dilemma best--the family dinner table "discussion," the fireman trying to explain why his little daughter needs to know about child labor abroad--are hilarious and sad, real and exaggerated.
That's the beauty of what Russell has captured: life seen from a vantage point that is unique. He's made an American original, and that's nothing to sneeze at. If the movie runs down as it winds down (the first half is brilliant, the second just good), it still keeps chugging along with ideas and humor. There were rumors of bad feelings and problems on the set, but what's made it to the screen is terrific, with all the performances abetting the director's vision. For us lucky viewers, that's what counts. |
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