I walked into the Uptown Theater with a jug of sangria and a flask-full of the cheapest Canadian whiskey available. I walked out with two empty bottles and the eternal laughter of the Great Existential Joke ringing in my ears.

That’s not to say you need some sort of substance to enjoy this “existential comedy.” All that’s required is the substance between your ears and the ability to laugh at your own human condition, the innumerable ridiculous ways in which we try to fill the void of meaning with ever-multiplying manifestations of bullshit. This seems to be the stance taken by “I Heart Huckabees,” a viciously funny satire of everything from Hegelian Pure Being to bourgeois Christianity to New Age appropriation of quantum physics. “We all bring our own chains” to this world, going up and down the existential elevator, hysteric subjects grasping at whatever new philosophy allows us to create the illusion of meaning, whether that philosophy be the self-righteousness of environmental activism or the false fulfillments promised by a corporatized culture of commodity. In the end, confronted with the emptiness of our positions, we are left with only each other, recognizing our own inconsistencies in a sort of partial nihilism with which the film leaves us.

Which is not to say the film offers us any answers. That would defeat the purpose. It seems inherent to the nature of satire that, in the end, we are left with a moderate negativity, and this film is no different. Writer/director David O. Russell tears down with equal vigor the left, the right, optimism, and pessimism. Indeed, it seems that anyone with any kind of answer or stance falls victim to the film, ultimately forcing us into the same position in which the human condition begins: imperfect and impotent, with only the capability to do as this film does flawlessly: enjoy the cosmic joke that lacks a punch line, perhaps enjoying some wine and whiskey along the way.