I heart the absurdity, cruelty of existentialism

I (Heart) Huckabees (2004)
Fox Searchlight Pictures presents a David O. Russell film, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jude Law. Written by Russell and Jeff Baena. 106m. R for language and a sex scene.

4 stars

Humans wait until they undergo a crisis of faith before they start exploring existential and sometimes unanswerable questions.

To make light of our searches for truth in apparent meaninglessness, writer/director David O. Russell has created “I (Heart) Huckabees,” a comedy that finds four people in a similar void.

If Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzmann) is not the film’s protagonist, he’s certainly its driving force. As a founder of the local chapter of the Open Spaces Coalition, Albert finds himself battling to preserve every rock, bog and marsh feasible and often writing conquest poetry at the site of the latest save.

Albert’s peacenik group is a problem for the big box retailer Huckabees (think Target with the panache of Old Navy), who wants to deforest an open area for another supercenter. The corporate arm sends Brad Stand (Jude Law) to wine and dine Albert and the two agree on a mutually beneficial idea. Albert helps the Huckabees image by promoting its dedication to natural resources, while Brad arranges guest performer Shania Twain to perform at the protected site.

Meanwhile, Albert is consumed with a series of chance coincidences in which he sees the same tall African man in three completely different scenarios. He hires colleague/lovers Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) and Vivian Jaffe (Lily Tomlin), a pair of “existential detectives.”

In Bernard’s world, everything is the same even though we perceive it differently. If Albert can overcome his inferiority issues about Brad, he can come closer to seeing Brad as an equal and applying Bernard’s “sameness” theory, and in essence, be liberated from his complex about the coincidence.

As the coalition grows weary of Albert’s egotistical machinations for the spotlight, they elect Brad as their new populist leader. This throws Albert into a philosophical tizzy, and he strays from the Jaffes to Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert). Vauban believes in a prevailing nihilist attitude of an individual and rejects the detachment philosophy of Bernard Jaffe. After all, she says, its impossible to let go when the drama of human life pulls on an individual constantly.

And despite these rather dry explanations, “I (Heart) Huckabees” is a tremendous funny movie that will undoubtedly hold even more charm in repeat viewings. And although I’ve laid out the differing philosophies, it’s apparent throughout “I Y Huckabees” that we’re not supposed to grasp their full meanings. The film, I believe, is a satirical condemnation of philosophers who ascribe to specific tenets and resist other interpretations.

Reflecting our own confusion is Tommy Corn (Mark Wahlberg), who has somehow justified his otherwise meaningless existence by speaking out against petroleum use. Tommy feels meaningless when he examines himself in terms of the greater galaxy. So, does his fight against rampant petroleum use mean anything in a world that is just a speck in the bigger picture? A rather humorous discourse between Tommy and a religious family about halfway through this picture will demonstrate the absurdity of getting too wrapped up in things we’re not meant to know with certainty.

“I (Heart) Huckabees” is a fast starter. Some will likely be off-put by a more moderately paced second-half which demonstrates, in a more subdued fashion, how the lives of Brad and model girlfriend Dawn (Naomi Watts) are irrevocably altered by the Jaffe’s investigation. But just because the jokes aren’t coming fast and furious anymore doesn’t mean this film loses its steam; quite the contrary.

For the thinking individual, “I (Heart) Huckabees” is a thinking film that, amazingly, asks us not to think about the philosophies contained within. Instead, it asks us to contemplate seriously a more tangible point: In the search for meaning in our lives, why don’t we ever resolve not to answer the unanswerable questions?

Men won’t ‘dance’ to this film

Shall We Dance? (2004)
Miramax Films presents a Peter Chelsom film, starring Richard Gere. Written by Audrey Wells, from a film written by Masayuki Suo. 106m. PG-13 for some sexual references and brief language.

1 star

“Shall We Dance?” doesn’t know if it wants to be a film about romance, complacency, family or ballroom dancing. It’s not a good film, and it will find favor with a terribly limited audience. You’ll only love it if you’re willing to concede that ballroom dancing can cure feelings of infidelity, spark tired romances anew and make your dreadful job actually wonderful.

Our narrator is a writer of wills (Richard Gere), who tells us he is bored with his job through frowns that sometimes turn to grimaces. He rides the El train back and forth to his job, where he’s overworked, yet we never see any of his clients.

On that train, he catches the eye of another terribly frowny individual, Paulina (Jennifer Lopez). Paulina looks out the window of Miss Mitzi’s Dance School with her sad face, which remarkably encourages will writer John Clark to sign up for ballroom dance lessons immediately.

John may have signed up for lessons because he’s attracted to Paulina, but we’re not certain. “Shall We Dance?” has an infuriating habit of hedging its bets. If it can hint at a moment of infidelity but not express it, maybe it can have both audiences who are hoping for a little chemistry and those who are not.

I myself was hoping for a little spark, because John is married to the terribly frumpy Beverly (Susan Sarandon), whose dull existence might convince anyone to stay away from their home for long stretches of time.

Alas, it’s John’s until-now-unrealized desire for ballroom dancing - and spicy Puerto Ricans with beautiful derrieres, perhaps - that has drawn him like a magnet to Miss Mitzi’s. I felt this wasn’t too much of a stretch for audiences, since Gere played a - wait for it, wait for it - tap dancing entertainer in his last film.

On his new found odyssey, John is accompanied by comic relief in the form of a stereotypically ungraceful heavy guy (Omar Benson Miller) and a macho man (Bobby Cannavale), who honestly believes what he’s heard about men who can dance. He becomes the stereotypical homosexual using reason only logical in the movie world - by expressing so many homophobic feelings, which proves he must be hiding something.

The true scene stealer of the movie is Stanley Tucci, who plays an accomplished dancer too fragile to admit his successes in the testosterone-induced workplace that is apparently the law firm in which Clark works. This is a far cry from the wealthy murder suspect in “Murder One” that put Tucci in the American consciousness.

As Clark becomes more and more accomplished himself, director Peter Chelsom intersperses more dance sequences into the benign plot. But this is no “Strictly Ballroom,” a movie that lampooned the competition of ballroom dancing while providing the most jaw-dropping visuals courtesy of Baz Luhrmann. Its direction is trite and unflattering to the natural grace and rhythms of the waltz, two-step or mambo.

So unarmed with a visual flair or a working plot, “Shall We Dance?” turns into a women’s weepy more appropriate for repeat showings on the Lifetime channel. Clark’s marriage, of course, is saved by a sa-shay while everyone else finds ridiculously easy gains in the happiness department.

“Shall We Dance?” is adapted from a Japanese movie of the same name that found good success in both overseas and domestic markets. Gone is any sense of the original, which I haven’t seen, or what I imagine it took into consideration. John Clark isn’t overworked as an American lawyer. Yet I imagine Shoehei Sugiyama, the inspiration for Clark, had real issues with the expectations of long hours found in a typical Japanese accounting agency.

Famous cinephile Roger Ebert is notorious for saying it’s not important what movies are about, but how they’re about them. The producers of the redux of “Shall We Dance?” thought they could “Americanize” the script. What they left behind was the real translation.

Satire meets scatological in political marionette film

Team America: World Police (2004)

Paramount Pictures presents a Trey Parker film, starring the voices of Parker and Matt Stone. Written by Parker, Stone and Pam Brady. 100m. R for graphic, crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language, all involving puppets.

3 stars

If there is one thing to be said for “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it’s that they have a good sense of the embarrassing facets of American doctrine.

As purveyors of the “dick-and-fart” realm, their latest effort - “Team America: World Police” - appeals to their strongest demographic: those of us whose minds inescapably rest in the gutters of good taste. But this faction is so large that the pair’s lampoon of our post-Sept. 11 world may have more resonance this November than anything Michael Moore has produced. Laughter is good medicine, and “Team America: World Police” is carrying extra stock.

Filmed entirely with marionettes as actors, this film begs us not to take its politics seriously. It opens with American police agents staking out terrorists making an acquisition of weapons of mass destruction in Paris. Apparently, the weapons fit in the briefcase not much larger than a breadbox these days. In the scuffle for possession, American police destroy the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre through errant handling of missile systems. But perhaps more seriously, a team member has his little marionette body blown to bits by a Middle Eastern extremist.

This leads Spottswoode (voice of Daran Norris) to recruit Gary (voice of Parker), Broadway’s most accomplished theatrical performer as the team’s newest spy. Meanwhile, faulty data from the team’s computer, I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E., allows North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il (voice of Parker) to assemble launch sites for world destruction with the accidental help from liberal Hollywood actors like Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn and Tim Robbins.

The result is a hilarious criss-crossing of continents by the world police, who manage to destroy most major architectural wonders while infiltrating the terror network. They’re backed by a ridiculously uproarious soundtrack, including a theme song that speaks to their ability to kick butt.

Much like Parker and Stone’s previous effort, “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” the lyricism of the included songs makes the mood much lighter. A montage sequence of Gary’s training includes a song about montages which reminds its audience, “Even ‘Rocky’ had a montage.” And Gary’s relationship with terrorist psychology expert Lisa has its own ditty, which muses, “I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made ‘Pearl Harbor.’”

But it’s another song that perhaps reflects one of the biggest problems during wartime these days: country music. Alan Jackson, John Michael Montgomery and Toby Keith, take note: Parker and Stone’s “Freedom isn’t Free” encapsulates everything wrong with trying to reduce a war into a four-minute product. In the “South Park” world, freedom isn’t free, so you better chip in “your buck oh five.”

Another messy off-shoot of war is the propensity of motion picture actors to believe the rest of the country really cares what they think about the state of the nation. The pair have their way with the most outspoken, making marionette versions of their visages and signing them up with the Film Actors Guild (an abbreviation of which leads to several crude jokes).

Hollywood is notorious for having no sense of humor, so it’s not surprising Sean Penn has already ripped off a memo denouncing the pair’s recent related pronouncement that people who are uninformed should not vote this November.

Besides the politically heavy-handed Hollywood, there’s whole groups of people who aren’t going to enjoy this bit of satire. If you can’t stomach the foul-mouthed, scatological-based humor of “South Park,” then I can’t imagine watching a puppet puke is going to be your cup of tea. If you squirmed when David Caruso showed his rear end on “NYPD Blue,” I doubt strongly you’ll find gratuitous marionette sex to your liking. But those who can manage to quell their sense of offense for 90 minutes might find an enjoyable lampoon at our current political climate.

For the rest of you, remember freedom isn’t free. If you’re not going to pay to see “Team America: World Police,” don’t forget to chip in your buck oh five.

Finding a more urban ‘Nemo’

Shark Tale (2004)
DreamWorks SKG presents a film directed by Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson and Rob Letterman and featuring the voices of Will Smith and Robert De Niro. Written by Letterman, Damian Shannon, Mark Swift and Michael J. Wilson. 100m. PG for some mild language and crude humor.

2 stars

I know a woman who swears that every Jeffrey Katzenberg idea is just a rip-off from a Disney think-tank. After witnessing “Shark Tale,” I’m inclined - now more than ever - to believe her.

Katzenberg is the ‘K’ in the Dreamworks SKG partnership, which brought “Shark Tale” to theaters this past weekend. Although I haven’t read what other critics have written about this kiddy fare, I’d imagine they were tempted to make comparisons to another animated, big-budget, child-centric underwater fish film that hit screens just last year.

Yes, “Shark Tale” is kind of like seeing your favorite television show move to UPN: You can recognize the most general details, but now the cast talks a little bit more urban. They’ve got a little more “street cred” and their ideologies run a little more toward the “get rich quick” schemes instead of the “honest day’s pay” routine. In essence, “Shark Tale” is the diluted product of “Finding Nemo”; the runoff of a lukewarm idea now served terribly cold.

In its quest to be family inclusive, “Shark Tale” contains more than two dozens references a fan of mob movies could only enjoy. The first is its “as voiced by” cast, which sounds like the latest crop for a “Godfather meets the Goodfellas and the Sopranos” feature. Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Michael Imperioli and Vincent Pastore all make appearances.

De Niro has long parlayed his roles in “The Godfather Part II,” “Goodfellas,” “Casino” and “The Untouchables” into others where he was only asked to parody the characters he played in those seminal films. “Shark Tale” is no different, relying on the viewer’s keen sense of classic moments from these films for its humor. If you haven’t seen the scene where Al Capone walks around his capos at a dinner party with a baseball bat in “The Untouchables,” you’re going to miss a funny in-joke during this movie. Ditto to Joe Pesci’s memorable dialogue during “Goodfellas” about the way in which he’s funny.

“Shark Tale” plays out in an entire environment of self-awareness, it seems, down to the sharks knowing that the “Theme from Jaws” is their hunting overture. The animators also do a spectacular job of matching the fish’s countenances with distinct features from their voice actors. Oscar the Sharkslayer has Will Smith’s eyes. Don Lino has Robert De Niro’s grimace. Angie has Renée Zellweger’s puffy cheeks and pursed lips. Sykes has Martin Scorsese’s terribly overgrown eyebrows and Lola has Angelina Jolie’s oversized lips and sultry voice.

The plot involves Oscar taking credit for the death of Frankie (Imperioli), the shark brother of Lenny (Jack Black) and son to Don Lino. Oscar’s dreams of success are sealed when word spreads around the reef of his shark-slaying abilities. On the way to the top, he discards his best friend, Angie, for the golddigger Lola.

In order to keep the fallacy afloat, Oscar conspires with Lenny to stage the shark’s death in a mutual beneficial way. Lenny is overcome by Don Lino’s ability to love him even though he’s a vegetarian (read: different) and Oscar knows his life as a luftmensch hasn’t guaranteed him any penthouse luxuries.

The child-friendly message is given by Angie, who tells Oscar that he doesn’t have to live at the top of the reef to be somebody. But the moral is lost throughout the film, which ultimately heaps more glory onto Oscar as a reward for his laziness, dishonesty and generally untrustworthy behavior.

Gone is what should have been the real coda: Get a job, and work your way to the top like everyone else. There are no shortcuts to success.

But Lenny’s story may teach children a valuable lesson about tolerance and I’d be amiss if I didn’t mention that Lenny’s sometimes effeminate behavior was, I believe, a coding for homosexuality. Perhaps that was the subtext of “Shark Tale” that we’re supposed to remember, instead of Oscar’s resolution.

I wasn’t the biggest supporter of “Finding Nemo” because I thought there were too many scary scenes for the littlest tikes. But I’d recommend that film over Dreamworks’ rehash, mostly because the animation in “Nemo” is lot more interesting and the characters enjoy a dynamic element lost in this film. “Shark Tale” is breezy fun and harmless, but don’t expect your child to stare in rapture at the big screen or television set for too long.