Ultimately, Huckabees doesn't work. But it sure does stimulate. This is just the kind of "failure" we could use plenty more of.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Huckabees is the real thing--an authentic disaster--but the picture is so odd that it should inspire, in at least a part of the audience, feelings of fervent loyalty.
Clever but distancing, this existential comedy bounces along on the backs of its tasty cast, witty writing and stylistic verve.
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
David O. Russell hasn't yet developed enough filmmaking savvy to juggle so many intellectual, emotional, and narrative elements. He's clever and ambitious, but perhaps too much so.
A fresh, buoyant, mischievous and rather jolly meditation - if that's the word for a movie as divinely nuts as this one is - on the meaning of life in an unhappy world.
There's more than a bit of Charlie Kaufman to the heady premise, although the scenario doesn't double back on itself--except perhaps in the joke of having Schwartzman's actual mother, Talia Shire, play his mother on-screen.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
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.
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
Despite the unique premise and some truly inspired casting, the picture remains stuck in an existential rut of its own.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
What in the Buddha's name is going on in I Heart Huckabees? Russell has come up with a grab bag of ideas that don't stick with you because they don't stick together.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
The philosophic notions in I Love Huckabees are ultimately not much more than window dressing for some fancy slapstick.