In today's messed-up political climate, a lot of people are lost: they're depressed by what they see going on in the world, they wonder if we're all on our last legs, they're frustrated by the complete lack of influence that they have personally. They might turn to Oprah and Dr. Phil; they might turn to marching in the streets; they might tune in and drop out. David O. Russell, the director of one of the best movies in recent years, 1999's Three Kings, made a movie about it. This is an anguished scream of "what does it all mean?" tucked into a reasonably funny comedy. I don't think I "got it," because it's so obviously a picture of what's going on in Russell's head, and maybe only he really understands what he made. Maybe he doesn't understand either. What he ended up with was a film that has some good characters and some funny scenes, and maybe some insights, but that doesn't add up to as much as it might have.

One big problem is the main character, Albert Markovski, is played by Jason Schwartzman in a not entirely serious manner. "But this is a comedy," you protest. Yes, but it's a comedy that would have worked a lot better had more of the actors played their parts straight. It would have been funnier if the actors had believed what they were saying. Perhaps, because they didn't understand what they were saying, they didn't know what else to do but clown. Perhaps, too, that's Russell's fault, because either he thought the clowning would work, or he didn't direct the film well enough. Anyway, Albert is the purported leader of an environmental coalition that's attempting to save some marshland; all they've managed to save so far is a big rock ("You rock, rock," goes the poem Albert composes). He has decided that the only way that their coalition will succeed is if he allows the fox into the henhouse: he approaches Brad (Jude Law), the spokesperson for Huckabees, a corporate megalith something like Wal-Mart. He's hoping that Huckabees is willing to help out the coalition to bolster their incorrect public image as a socially conscious entity, but Brad quickly takes over the coalition with his dazzling smiles and glad-handing, leaving Albert on the outs.

It doesn't help that Albert is having an existential crisis. He's been experiencing a series of coincidences, wherein he sees the same tall "African guy" around town. This must mean something, he thinks. There's something a little annoying about the film's treatment of this situation: is it Russell drawing attention to the fact that white folks find tall, dark-skinned African people odd, or is it that, with a dash of white liberal guilt? Or is it my white liberal guilt that makes me question it? Anyway, Albert goes to a pair of existential detectives played by Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman. They follow you around, root through your garbage, listen to your conversations, and find out what's troubling you. They're proponents of a worldview in which everything is connected: it's all part of the same big blanket, and Albert needs to realize that there are no coincidences when everything is connected. Or something. Hoffman and Tomlin dash off statements like "Everything is the same, even if it's different," and "Everything you could ever want or be, you already have and are."

So the question is, are they supposed to be ridiculous? OK, I know they're supposed to be ridiculous in a comedic sense, but what does Russell think about what they have to say? It doesn't help that Tomlin and Hoffman suffer from the same clowning that Schwartzman demonstrates. It's possible to deliver a funny-but-meaningful line in a manner that demonstrates that it's all right to laugh but that there might be something to what's been said. It doesn't happen with most of the characters in this film. In fact, I counted only two: Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), a fireman who's become obsessed with how petroleum is the root of all social evils (and is he all that wrong?), and Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), a preacher of nihilism who was once the existential detectives' star pupil. They're both forced to endure indignities, especially Huppert, who has a sex scene in the mud, but they manage to be convincing at it, something that the rest of the cast doesn't do. Wahlburg is a joy to watch, because he embodies that desperation that I feel sometimes, when I see the world going to hell but nobody else seems to care. I think it's something that a lot of socially conscious people feel at least sometimes. Wahlburg's character is incapable of dealing with that feeling.

Russell has set up an artificial war between the forces of "everything is connected" and the forces of "everything is meaningless." It's the film's biggest dissapointment, although not much of a surprise, when it comes down squarely on the fence with a vaguely 1970s "whatever works for you" message. I suppose I wanted him to brashly support one pole or another, if only to surprise me. The most important line in the movie (you know this, because it's repeated several times and even printed onscreen once) is "How am I not myself?" We're meant to think about this: we are always "ourselves," so whatever we do, we are being ourselves, even if it seems like strange behavior. I was almost run down by a taxi when, deep in thought about whether this statement is a revalation or a colossal and basically useless statement of the obvious, I misread a traffic light and wandered out in front of it. Maybe that's what Russell was going for.