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Albert (Schwartzman) is the head of an environmental agency locked in a battle with the department store Huckabees to save a local marshland/forest. In a moment of soul-searching, he hires the existential detectives Vivian and Bernard (Tomlin and Hoffman) to figure out the meaning of his life. But their investigation complicates things, especially with the Huckabees boss (Law) and his girlfriend-spokesmodel (Watts), who both hire Vivian and Bernard as well. Then Albert finds a kindred spirit in a fellow client (Wahlberg), and together they mutiny to find answers from Vivian and Bernard's nemesis (Huppert).

Is everything interconnected or are we on our own? Are coincidences actually meaningful? Is it dangerous to confront the truth about ourselves and actually feel something? The script bats these kinds of questions around like a tennis ball, bouncing ideas off arguments while maintaining the goofy central plotline and letting the characters adapt to each new bit of enlightenment, all while getting more and more confused. It's absolutely mind-spinning--clever, warped and deeply hilarious.

The performances are superb across the board, with Schwartzman as our frazzled everyman. But Tomlin and Hoffman are the standouts, hilariously lurking and chattering in the background of every scene. We happily follow all of these endearing people on their quests, laughing as some vital discovery propels them into an even more outrageous scenario. As might be expected, a film like this is extremely cerebral--it never grabs us emotionally, even though there are moments of revelatory meaning.

Russell is such a kinetic filmmaker that we happily follow him anywhere. This film harks back to the mayhem of Flirting With Disaster, but the way he shoots and edits here is even more inventive, blending the quirkiness and random jokes with a provocative central theme that playfully confronts our brains. He cuts through both society and individual beliefs with ruthless wit, and in the end discovers the worst villain of all: indifference.