I Heart Huckabees

Premiere Glenn Kenny

The result is by far the most original comedy of the year. Russell might alienate some audience members here--but it’s possible they literally won't know what they're missing.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

The film is a snort-out-loud-funny master class of controlled chaos.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Among the most insane mainstream movies ever released.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Watching I Heart Huckabees was like taking my first Manhattan cab ride with a madman behind the wheel. As the skyscrapers whizzed by, I thought, "What a view! I just wish we'd slow down, so I could take everything in."

Empire Dan Jolin

A fresh, funny little romp.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

One of the boldest, most audacious American movies of the last 25 years, a freewheeling cerebral carnival of energy and ideas, if not always coherence or cohesion.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Best of all is Mark Wahlberg as Tommy, an angry post-9/11 firefighter so against Big Oil that he rides to fire scenes on his bike.

ReelViews 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.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

The frantic nuttiness of the stylistically dynamic Huckabees is often laugh-out-loud funny, but amid the pandemonium there's a sense of truly rigorous soul-searching.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A risky, foolish, intelligent comedy.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

As one might imagine, with such a neato premise and lofty goal, the plot's a little messy. So points docked for execution.

Variety David Rooney

Clever but distancing, this existential comedy bounces along on the backs of its tasty cast, witty writing and stylistic verve.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

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.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

The movie is undeniably weird, though it's hardly what you'd call "experimental." My hunch is that whether you love it or reject it as obtuse, incoherent or self-involved will be a generational thing.

Washington Post Teresa Wiltz

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Despite a consistent tone of all-out absurdity, it's a very demanding movie, and its goofiness is never inspired or laugh-out-loud funny enough to carry us along on its leap of imagination.

USA Today Claudia Puig

What emerges is part screwball comedy, absurdist farce, social satire and earnest self-exploration. If it had the unwavering focus and clear-eyed vision of Russell's previous two features, I Heart Huckabees might have been brilliant.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Huckabees boasts an impressive cast, and every one of them is fun to watch. But there's a strong sense that no one really knows what's going on here.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

So I didn't Huckabees, nor did I entirely not it. Rather, when the end draws nigh and judgment beckons, I'm doomed again to dither in the tepid netherworld, that vast limbo where movies are only half-decent and movie-going is merely half-ed.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

A philosophical comedy about man's place in a universe colonized by Targets and Wal-Marts.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Despite the unique premise and some truly inspired casting, the picture remains stuck in an existential rut of its own.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Feels weirdly impersonal; very little love, or even true thought, shows up on the screen.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

The resulting product is so disjointed it's hard to tell if Russell dumbed down the film in the hope of garnering a larger audience, or if I Heart Huckabees simply isn't as smart as it likes to think it is.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The cinematic equivalent of the mad-scientist experiment gone awry. It seems to be grooving on its own strangeness, at the expense of its connection with a paying audience.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Individual moments and lines and events in I Heart Huckabees are funny in and of themselves. Viewers may be mystified but will occasionally be amused. It took boundless optimism and energy for Russell to make the film, but it reminds me of the Buster Keaton short where he builds a boat but doesn't know how to get it out of the basement.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Overstocked farce.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

With its lackluster surfaces and thin core, his (Russell) film displays neither heart nor brains enough to earn its whimsy.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Everyone up on the screen appears to be having so much fun, you wish the movie found a way to let you into the party.

Newsweek David Ansen

Ultimately, Huckabees doesn't work. But it sure does stimulate. This is just the kind of "failure" we could use plenty more of.

The New Yorker David Denby

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.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The philosophic notions in I Love Huckabees are ultimately not much more than window dressing for some fancy slapstick.

Entertainment Weekly 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.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

When the average comedy is aimed at juvenile 12-year-olds of all ages, the fact that Russell's target audience is precocious 12-year-olds of all ages is a significant improvement without actually being a triumph of mature wit over boorish puerility.

Christian Science Monitor 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.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Where Russell wobbles in this screenplay, which he wrote with Jeff Baena, is not in his intent but that he omitted to make it funny.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Russell, a former student of Buddhist monk-philosopher Robert Thurman's, is reaching too far, straining too hard, saying too much that adds up to so little after all the mumbos and jumbos tallied up by film's end.

Slate David Edelstein

Russell is a manically inventive writer-director--maybe the most fearless talent of his generation. It's not a contradiction to say that I admire him more than ever while pronouncing Huckabees an unmitigated disaster.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's uncompromisingly bad, single-mindedly off-target.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Huckabees is godawful, a mirthless, bilious bore in which the vividly focused fury of "Three Kings" has become free-floating anger at the follies of human existence.