What is Hollywood going to do with David O. Russell?

How many times can the maverick director turn the filmmaking world upside down?

He'd already done it three times in a row, beginning in 1994 with his widely popular independent debut, Spanking the Monkey, and followed by Flirting with Disaster and Three Kings.

All of those films were both audience and critical favorites, and they allowed Russell to further advance his unusual career with financial support.

Now, 10 years since his debut, Russell delivers what could be his weirdest project yet, an existential comedy.

Yes, that's what I Heart Huckabees -- one of the most conversational films ever made about something completely unconversational -- is referred to as. And believe me when I say existentialism is something that is completely uncommunicative. After all, if I don't understand it after two hours of listening to people babbling on about it, when will I ever?

So Russell has given us an existential comedy; what does that mean? In short, that means that you get some of today's best actors and actresses -- Jude Law, Naomi Watts, arguably Jason Schwartzman -- and surround them with an extremely gimmicky concept that only they can completely understand.

Oh wait, Russell understands it, too. Maybe a little too well, unfortunately. His screenplay is filled with bits of wisdom on existentialism. Couldn't it be sort of a conflict of interest issue when the only person that understands a concept decides to make a movie about it? I think it might.

It seems as though older and wiser actors understand the concept as well, because Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin, two of the more accomplished employees of Tinseltown, are in the film as well. Not only are they in the film, but they are the existential detectives that are going to tell us what existentialism is!

Boy, do they ever.

When Schwartzman's character inquires about their services, the two open up a can of inflated noise and racket -- excuse me, perception and insight -- that ceases to close throughout the course of the film.

All along, the two actors seem to be enjoying their overwrought speech a little too much.

Perhaps it's because, like Russell, they don't care whether or not the audience gets it. They're in on the joke, and that's all that matters.

If there is a bright spot in the film, it comes in the form of Mark Wahlberg -- a typically non-comedic actor who happens to be the funniest person in this "comedy." I think Wahlberg's eco-obsessive firefighter works because he seems to be the only character sharing some of his laughs with the audience. Thank you, Marky Mark.

Since the film fails to let us in on the gimmick, I think I'll take a stab at what Russell really wanted us to believe the concept of this movie was: a large-scale take on the dangers of conservatism.

But if he wants us to know that idea, and suppose miraculously we do, shouldn't he supply some answers to the problems he presents?

Maybe he thinks that he did supply some solution. In my opinion, if he did, he's the only one who will ever really know what it means.

The rest of us are left, as Schwartzman and Wahlberg were upon conclusion of the film, sitting on a rock, staring into space.

Except we're not pondering existentialism.