Jude's crazy caper

As odd and baffling as its title, I Heart Huckabees is stuffed with star actors, multiple storylines, surreal comedy and wayward musings on Being, Nothingness and this crazy thing we call Life.

It contains both moments of pure brilliance and others of infuriating perplexity. But what, you ask impatiently, is it all about?

Good question. Jason Schwartzman (from Rushmore) is a dweeby environmental activist fighting Huckabees, a ruthless global supermarket chain. Unsettled when a tall African man keeps crossing his path, he hires a husband-and-wife team of New Age-y "existential detectives" to explain the coincidences and sort him out.

Played by a surprisingly sexy Lily Tomlin and a rumpled Dustin Hoffman in a peculiar, mop-top haircut, they identify his problem as smug corporate smoothie Jude Law.

Meanwhile, a rival worldview is being peddled by French philosopher Isabelle Huppert, a brand of Euro-kinky nihilism which advocates "cruelty, manipulation, meaninglessness" and degrading sex in the mud.

Confused? You will be - but that shouldn't matter too much for those who go with the flow; they will find in the film a surfeit of ideas, a good scattering of excellent jokes and some delicious performances.

If there's a fault, it's that Schwartzman, who should be the emotional focus, gets lost in the throng. But the film's titular heart is supplied instead by Mark Wahlberg, in his best role for several years as a fireman with post-9/11 traumatic stress disorder - a decent regular guy who has become the bewildered conscience of America.

Huckabees director David O Russell is one of a generation of indie film-makers breathing fresh and exciting life into the American cinema; it also includes Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne, Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Jonze and the writer Charlie Kaufman.

Different as they are, these men's movies such as Punch Drunk Love, Adaptation or Rushmore share certain features: a dark, cerebral humour, serpentine narratives and a special fondness for eccentric misfits on obsessive-compulsive private quests.

But Russell, whose last films were the fine Gulf War drama Three Kings (1999) and a new, controversial documentary about the Iraq War called Soldiers Pay, is clearly a good deal more politicised than his peers.