I HEART HUCKABEES (2004). David O. Russell's film has the coincidence-haunted Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) discovering in a borrowed jacket the business card of "existential detectives" Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) and Vivian (Lily Tomlin) Jaffe, a kind of Nick and Nora Charles for the new age, and signing on with the duo: Vivian will follow his every move and find the missing links in his external life, whereupon Bernard will dissolve those external links altogether, reconnecting Albert with the "blanket," the oneness underlying all phenomena, including that of Albert's illusory ego. He's not their only client, of course: nihilist fireman Tommy (Mark Wahlberg demonstrating what a skilled comic actor he is) has latched onto the dark side of the Jaffes' Buddha Lite philosophy as pitched by Jaffe apostate Caterine Vauban (a gelid Isabelle Huppert). And in addition to Tommy and Albert, who might represent the id and the superego, there's Brad Stand (Jude Law, doing a scintillating impression of an actor in a Howard Hawks screwball comedy), Albert's nemesis, the rising, ruthless star of the all-consuming Huckabees corporation, and the glib, shining embodiment of ego. Between that wasteland and the equally vapid void of second-hand satori pitched by the Jaffes and Caterine, Russell stakes out a turf of non-sequiturs, rapid-fire ephemera, and childlike delight in the sheer insanity of being. He doesn't make a case for saving the world or, for that matter, giving it up altogether. Still, in typographical terms at least, he challenges audiences to grasp the meaning, and appreciate the comedy, of that elusive concept Y. (107m)

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