Pondering life's deals at a mega-mart

I (heart) Huckabees, a head-scratcher about big-box stores and the meaning of life, is an "everything" movie in the way that Huckabees, a chain store like Target, is an "everything" mart.

This overstocked farce from satirist David O. Russell (Flirting With Disaster, Three Kings) pushes Zen and the art of bargain-hunting in Aisle 1, metaphysics in the information kiosk, and identity crisis in the parking lot.

Mostly, though, Russell's convoluted tale contrasts a scruffy, sullen idealist (Jason Schwartzman) with a cheery sellout (Jude Law), suggesting that cosmically they complete each other in the way that matter completes antimatter.

Is the filmmaker postulating Russell's Law, that every political action has its equal and opposite reaction?

The film opens with sullen environmentalist Albert Markovski (Schwartzman) as he pickets Huckabees to preserve a patch of open space near the chain's newest superstore. As Albert clutches a boulder symbolizing both his Sisyphean task and his stubborn personality, the worrywart is troubled that success bodes a larger failure.

For even if charismatic Huckabees exec Brad Stand (Law) hugs a few trees, won't Albert be co-opted? And if Albert doesn't take a firmer stand against encroaching global capitalism, won't Huckabees steamroll any community-minded agenda? And another thing, why do the Brads of the world who have no core values always get the great-looking women? (Brad's gal pal, honeypot Dawn Campbell, played by Naomi Watts, is the Huckabees spokesmodel.)

These questions, and dozens more relating to coincidence, conspiracy and destiny (why does Albert keep running into this African dude everywhere?), lead the idealist to hire "existential detectives" Bernard and Vivian (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) to investigate whether the patterns in his life have a larger meaning. (The film's cubist visuals, in which faces and landscapes are fragmented like mosaic tiles, play with patterns, too.)

The aggressively quirky husband-and-wife sleuths with the stealth of Bigfoot and coifs of Beatles impersonators spy on Albert and rifle through his garbage as their client has a mental meltdown.

Bernard attempts to pacify Albert with a "blanket theory," suggesting (I think) that all humans live under a cosmic quilt, it's just that we can't see the threads that weave us together.

But Albert will not be pacified. In Bernard and Vivian's waiting room the angry young ideologue meets an earnest firefighter, Tommy Corn, who stokes Albert's rage.

In the capable hands of Mark Wahlberg, who can throw screwball and knuckleball, Tommy is the one memorable character here: an energy conservationist who rides his bike to emergencies because fire trucks are fuel-inefficient.

Tommy introduces Albert to Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), a former student of Bernard and Vivian's who has renounced their touchy-feeliness for stylish nihilism. Her conversion presages that of Brad, who undergoes a spiritual transformation of his own.

When Huppert slinks in on her stiletto heels, trailing hauteur like perfume, I considered whether I would have liked this film more if it had been a subtitled comedy about zany Parisian intellectuals. Peut-être.

If I'm not mistaken, and you'll tell me if I am, the simple message of Russell's furiously overcomplicated film is that Americans need to start thinking out of the big box. Hey, you've gotta have .

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.

I (heart) Huckabees ** (out of four stars)

Produced by David O. Russell, Gregory Goodman and Scott Rudin, directed by Russell, written by Russell and Jeff Baena, photography by Peter Deming, music by Jon Brion, distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 45 mins.

Albert Markovski. . . Jason Schwartzman

Bernard. . . Dustin Hoffman

Vivian. . . Lily Tomlin

Brad Stand. . . Jude Law

Dawn Campbell. . . Naomi Watts

Parent's guide: R (profanity, sex)

Playing at: Ritz Five and Ritz Sixteen/NJ