'Pretentious' is good when it's this funny

'I Heart the Huckabees' brilliantly describes the complexities and the moral haziness of the world in which we live. Movies with this subject matter are usually incredible morbid; the world is portrayed as a moral darkness, 'grey' decisions are made by fat business men, and the hero is some type of social outcast. David O Russell's production, just his The Three Kings before, is a new take on the subject. As with The 3 Kings, O Russell contrasts the dark subject matter against a refreshingly comical background. Rather than sulk about the state we are all in - this film waltzes like a dance through the battlefield - studying the lines that lie between us - and ensuring they are comically crossed. This turns a bleak message about the desperateness of human nature into one of our humanity - and all communicated in a way that doesn't at all bring you down. Laugh as the two factions of Existentialism battle it out - the falseness of a corporation smile crumbling into self pity - the fireman (Mark Wahlberg) who rides his bike to stop fires (to save on gas) - the environmental activist, as he struggles to define the real reasons behind his struggle against corporate America - listen to his laughable poetry, his inner doubts, and watch what flaky sense of reality leads him to the existentialists. I loved this film, and considered it the best film of the year. People say it was pretentious. So what? To say something is pretentious requires an air of pretension too. We are all pretentious in that we value our own opinions over others - a topic this movie covers in much detail.