Albert Markovski is a poet in crisis. Played by "Rushmore" mongo-nerd Jason Schwartzman, Albert has just witnessed a smooth-talking corporate yes man (Jude Law) hijack his homegrown pro-environment action group — this by a guy who would embrace the American Nazi Party if he thought it would help him sell fleece pullovers. Moreover, Albert keeps bumping into the same tall African man every day, apparently by accident. Is it a sign? Should Albert change his life? Does anything matter?

So begins "I Heart Huckabees," writer-director David O. Russell's serio-comic portrait of America in the throes of a full-blown Old Navy meltdown. Hard to categorize and even harder to resist, it's a wild, unruly New Age brain-teaser that showers itself in human complexity and grapples gamely with the mysteries of existence. Russell ("Three Kings") offers no easy answers, but gets high marks for audacity — unless you've watched Robert Altman on horse tranquilizers, "I Heart Huckabees" is certainly like nothing you've ever seen.

Hoping to shoo away his crisis, Albert retains the services of Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin), aka "The Existential Detectives," a pair of married metaphysicians who wax philosophic about universal interconnection and probe Albert's personal life to ferret out the source of his anxieties. "We're not therapists," Bernard says haughtily, just before sticking Albert in a deprivation tank.

Observing Albert at work and home, Bernard and Vivian uncover his deep, festering resentment of Brad Stand (Law), a smarmy golden boy executive at a growing chain of retail super-stores called Huckabees. Convinced that Brad is the key to cracking Albert's case, the Jaffes expand their investigation into Brad's life, including his live-in relationship with Dawn Campbell (Naomi Watts from "The Ring"), a beautiful headcase who shills Huckabees apparel as the face of the company's goofy, Old Navy-style ad campaign. One thing is certain: Brad's interest in the environment is purely strategic, pursued in the interest of breaking ground on a new store.

As a filmmaker, Russell has a knack for finding truth in the things he makes fun of — a fact that was particularly evident in his best movie, the madcap roots farce "Flirting With Disaster" (1996). Here, he embaks on a manic yet oddly meaningful send-up of New Age angst; Mark Wahlberg ("Three Kings") is appealingly tragic as a disallusioned fireman (and fellow Jaffe client) who engages Albert in spirited, utterly futile debates about the merits of nihilism ("Nothing is connected, nothing matters") vs. holism ("Everything is connected, everything matters"); French actress Isabelle Huppert ("8 Women") is an imperious delight as the sunken-cheeked French nihilist who seduces Albert away from the Jaffes and engages him in an appallingly messy act of lovemaking.

There are scenes and conversations that might appear to be thematic dead-ends to literal-minded viewers; a dinner table debate about globalism and suburban sprawl; a sermon about the disconnect between the self we are and the self we show others; and, most significantly, satirical observations about the awesome capacity of corporate America to co-opt anything that might impede its growth, right down to environmental movements designed to stop it. Russell uproots so much of the collective unconscious, it's hard not to feel a little panicked by the mess he makes.

Still, it's lightness and hope that prevails in "I Heart Huckabees," not cynicism and paranoia. Ultimately, ingeniously, Russell's movie is less about the social issues at hand than the importance of striking that precarious balance between detachment and awareness in what is, after all, an utterly horrifying world. As one of Russell's characters muses simply and truthfully: “Nothing is OK, so it’s OK.”