I Heart Huckabees 2004

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: You have to give everyone involved credit for mounting a joke that, if not of Dadaist proportions, should prove pretty funny to everyone except the rubes who wander in expecting to see something they can comprehend. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Russell is obviously working out his considerable angst ... but in an admirable attempt to opt for a manic, stream of consciousness energy, he ends up annoying his audience instead. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: I don't quite know what the point of it all was, but I do know that I enjoyed watching it. Read more

Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune: It's filled with characters who, desperate to feel deep, want answers to life's big questions. And watching it, you, also desperate to feel deep, will want answers to big questions like, 'What's this all about?' Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: There's ambition here, as well as a shaggy brilliance and a rare willingness on the part of a director to work out his questions in front of us, on film. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: This is a wildly uneven farce that circles around and around and around, and finally runs out of energy. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Along with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it's the most playful, intelligent and original comedy of the year. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: Simultaneously scattered and thought-provoking, as if writer/director David O. Russell gathered up all his loose ideas and decided to pack them tightly into one movie. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The trick of David O. Russell's splattery, overstuffed, and pretty wonderful Philosophy 101 farce is that it's also one of the sanest movies in ages. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: Schwartzman and Law are pitch-perfect in their roles as dueling poster boys for a transcendent existence versus a materially rich life. Read more

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: So willfully, smugly eccentric that it grows tiresome rather quickly. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, meaningful world, indeed. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: As a madcap comedy of existence, I Heart Huckabees is literally full of itself. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: A heady, messy piece of existential angst that works against all odds. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: More craftily structured than it might seem amid all this ruckus, Huckabees is held together -- just -- by the very polarities it embraces. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: The trip is a little too academic to reach its own heart. Read more

Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: Russell is hoping that the sheer volume of intellectual dither in this movie will propel audiences into the comedic stratosphere, but even astronauts know that there comes a time to touch down. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The characters themselves barely exist, as do the supposedly deep thoughts the film is supposed to express. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: The movie purports to be a comic meditation on metaphysics, but it has no intellectual resonance and resembles nothing so much as a sendup of psychotherapy. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Sinks to new depths of incoherent pretentiousness. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: David O. Russell's high-wire comedy captures liberal-left despair with astonishingly good humor: it's Fahrenheit 9/11 for the screwball set. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: It is difficult for me to describe how sweet and buoyant I found the film, despite its seemingly excessive stylization. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: A rewarding- frustrating smart-silly comedy of pretentious- modest ambitions. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: I'll admit that a lot of people are going to describe it as a waste of time, yet there's a likeability to the quirky characters that held my interest while tickling my funny bone. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The movie is like an infernal machine that consumes all of the energy it generates, saving the last watt of current to turn itself off. It functions perfectly within its constraints, but it leaves the viewer out of the loop. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Russell wants us to care about these deeper meanings, but he can't lead us to see them for ourselves. Read more

David Edelstein, Slate: The movie fails, I'm convinced, because it approaches the problem philosophically instead of psychologically. Read more

Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The movie is disjointed and pointless. But its biggest shortcoming is that it's not funny. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: It's simultaneously tightly ordered and awfully cluttered. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It's like a screwball comedy written by the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: This feverish state-of-the-split-nation address finds Russell tossing everything that matters -- and more -- into the pot, and producing a pretty indigestible and very messy stew. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: If it had the unwavering focus and clear-eyed vision of Russell's previous two features, I Heart Huckabees might have been brilliant. Read more

David Rooney, Variety: Clever but distancing, this existential comedy bounces along on the backs of its tasty cast, witty writing and stylistic verve. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: A sort of static whirligig -- too heavy to soar but too light to ever fall flat. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Theirs is too painfully forced, from the movie's thin premise to its ideas about what's funny: Hoffman in a Beatles wig? Read more

Teresa Wiltz, Washington Post: With razor-sharp performances, zingy one-liners, broad slapstick humor and a message of sorts, there's enough to distract the viewer from becoming hopelessly lost in the lint-filled chaos that is the umbilicus. Read more