Plot
Married couple Bernard and Vivian Jaffe operate their own detective agency. They're not ordinary detectives, but existentialist detectives whose clients want them to discover some deeper meaning of life. Their latest client is Albert Markovski, the poetry spouting, bicycle riding founder and director of the Open Spaces Coalition, whose raison d'être is the opposition of suburban sprawl in protecting open spaces. Their latest project is opposition to the construction of a Huckabees outlet on some suburban marshland, it a big box retailer. Brad Stand, a flashy Huckabees sales executive, is trying to seize control of the coalition to thwart Albert. Albert, who only "stumbled" upon Vivian and Bernard's agency, wants them to discover not anything related to work - in fact, he wants them to stay clear of his work altogether - but the meaning behind his encounters with a young, thin, tall black man, who he's run into in three different, unrelated situations. Regardless of Albert's request, Bernard and Vivian do look into his work in needing to see all aspects of his life, in the process Brad also hiring them in his continued takeover of all things Albert, which affects Brad's beautiful but insecure girlfriend, Dawn Campbell, the voice and image of Huckabee's latest marketing campaign. Bernard and Vivian further believe that both Albert and another of their existing clients, firefighter Tommy Corn, would benefit from being each other's "other". Tommy, whose wife does not understand him, believes all the world's problems are the result of petroleum. Tommy has recently come to an epiphany in reading Caterine Vauban's book he thought was given to him by Bernard and Vivian, but she who is really Bernard and Vivian's rival, a Frenchwoman come to infiltrate their cases. That epiphany, Caterine's theory, is that nothing is coincidental, she using science to back her theory. That epiphany may indeed be the center of what is happening as this collective tries to come to some meaning not only with the issues that brought them to Bernard and Vivian, but of what happens between them.
Written by
David O. Russell, Jeff Baena
Directed by
David O. Russell
Crew
Production Countries
United States of America, Germany
Production Companies
Huckabee's, N1 European Film Produktions GmbH & Co. KG, Scott Rudin Productions, Kanzeon, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Qwerty Films
Languages
English
Awards
3 wins & 11 nominations total