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I
# HUCKABEE'S
4/10
USA
2004 : David O RUSSELL : 106 mins
Instead of
paying decent money at the cinema to see David O Russell's desperately
disappointing I * Huckabees, you'd do better to purchase or rent
his previous film, absurdist post-Desert-Storm comedy Three
Kings: even if you've seen it before, the picture does improve
with repeated viewings and, given current and recent Iraq developments,
has never been more bracingly topical.
Huckabees
- and it's typical of this picture's gratingly pretentious post-adolescent
tone that nobody's sure how to write (is the middle element a word or
a symbol?) punctuate (Huckabees or Huckabee's?) or pronounce
("I love Huckabees" / "I Heart Huckabees"?) that title
- is topical, but in a rather more oblique and annoying way. The
flimsy "story" is essentially a conflict between environmentalists
protecting a marshland and the forces of big business, as represented
by the Huckabees department store.
This soon
boils down to a personal feud between angst-ridden activist Albert (Jason
Schwartzman) and smarmy Huckabees operative Brad (Jude Law), complicated
by a whole raft of supporting characters including eco-warrior fireman
Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), Brad's model girlfriend - and 'face of Huckabees'
- Dawn (Naomi Watts), "existential detectives" Bernard (Dustin
Hoffman) and Vivian (Lily Tomlin) and renegade nihilist Catherine (Isabelle
Huppert).
In these early
days of Bush's second term, Huckabees' flip treatment of pressing
ecological issue rings somewhat hollow - but Russell adopts this same
cavalier attitude to philosophy, psychology and whatever else drifts
into his self-indulgently baggy screenplay. Taking an ambitious step in
the territory so effortlessly occupied by the sublime Paul Thomas Anderson
- the main template seems to be Punch-Drunk
Love - Russell falls embarrassingly flat on his face.
The dialogue
is relentlessly trite and "clever", moments of farce are clunkingly
ill-advised, and it's painful to see such terrific talents as Tomlin and
Huppert so underused (and, in the case of the latter's mud-puddle sex
scene, humiliated). Plusses, like laughs, are very few and far between,
although Wahlberg's performance (in a poorly-conceived role) is intriguing
and amusing while Law, allowed a rare chance to rediscover his obnoxious
side, hasn't been used (or abused) this well in ages.
9th November,
2004
[seen 5th November : Ster Century, Leeds : public show : Leeds
Film Festival]
For more reviews
from the Leeds Film Festival click here
by Neil
Young
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