reviews |
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i heart huckabees |
score: 4
2004, 106 min
Jason Schwartzman hires Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin to discover the meaning behind the coincidences in his life. Instead they investigate his relationship with nemesis Jude Law. Concurrently they fight to keep Mark Wahlberg from drifting into nihlism.
The trailer for Huckabees was hilarious. The movie seems like a blander remake of that trailer, rather than the main feature. All the funny parts are still here, including a few that weren't in the trailer, but there's also a lot padded in between them. It's all pretty clever, but only occasionally really funny.
Though it is obviously part of the idea that there is no real reliance on story, the film is structured in such a way that it still needs a dramatic arc, be it grounded in story or not. It needs to build in dramatic urgency, peak and subside. As it is it's just a string of introductory passages, only differentiated by arbitrary sequence.
But, it's still worth seeing, because Jason Schwartzman and Jude Law fighting in the elevator is still funny. And because Mark Wahlberg is fantastic as a scruffy firefighter who appears perpetually disoriented. I think it is clear at this point, having successfully shed his Planet of the Apes stigma, that Matt Damon is the uglier, less talented version of Wahlberg, not the other way around.
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scale |
8: 10 best movies ever made
7: Absolute classic
6: See it a couple times, consider buying it
5: Good, entertaining and memorable
4: Adequate 1 - Entertaining
3: Adequate 2 - Entertaining but generic
2: Adequate 3 - Entertaining but generic and stupid
1: Bad, not entertaining
0: Shoot the moon. So bad it's good.
-1: Worse than that.
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cast |
Jason Schwartzman, Isabelle Huppert, Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Jude Law, Mark Wahlberg.
Directed by David O. Russell.
reviewed by pat.
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47.2% (17)
