Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) is a young man who heads the local chapter of an environmental group, the "Open Spaces Coalition." Albert pedals a bicycle to travel, and cares deeply about the environment. One of their current projects is an attempt to stop the building of a new Huckabees store, a chain of "big box" department stores. Albert is a rival of Brad Stand (Jude Law), a shallow power executive at Huckabees. Brad infiltrates Open Spaces by pretending to collaborate with them to improve the image of the Huckabees. Alfred allows it, as he needed a corporate sponsor to take Open Spaces to another level. But then, Brad displaces Albert as the leader purely with his charisma. Dawn Campbell (Naomi Watts) is Brad's live-in girlfriend and the face and voice of Huckabees; she appears in all of the store's commercials. Brad brings Shania Twain to perform at one of the events of Open Spaces and wins over the entire team. Brad's marketing is based more on the imagery than the actual message.After seeing the same conspicuous stranger (Ger Duany) three times, Albert contacts two existential detectives, Bernard (Dustin Hoffman) and Vivian Jaffe (Lily Tomlin). The detectives offer Albert their optimistic brand of existentialism-they name it universal inter-connectivity (which has some tenets of romantic and transcendentalist philosophies)-and spy on him, ostensibly to help him solve the coincidence. Albert says that seeing the same person 3 times is a sign, and he wants Vivian and Bernard to unravel this mystery and to figure out the truth of his life. Vivian starts spying on Albert as he goes through his daily routine at home, work and otherwise. Bernard and Vivian introduce Albert to Tommy Corn (Mark Wahlberg), an obsessively anti-petroleum firefighter. Tommy is assigned to Albert as his Other.Tommy grows dissatisfied with the Jaffes, feeling that they are not helping him. Tommy's wife has recently left him due to his extreme views on petroleum. Tommy helps Albert to break into his file and get the address for Stephen Nimieri, the stranger that he has encountered 3 times. They find that Nimieri is a refugee from Africa and lives with adoptive family (headed by Mr Hooten (Richard Jenkins) in America. Mr Hooten is an advocate for progress and says that environmental issues only come in the way of progress and prosperity, an idea that Alfred vehemently disagrees with. Tommy also criticizes Mr Hooten for driving an SUV. Tommy and Alfred are thrown out of their house. Alfred realizes that his coincidence means nothing.Tommy and Alfred attend the next Open Spaces meeting, to try and wrest back the agenda from Brad. Alfred writes a new poem, and Tommy tries to get the team excited by his anti-petroleum rhetoric. But the team only wants Brad as their leader.Seeking out other possibilities, Tommy ends up abandoning and undermining the Jaffes by introducing Albert to Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), a former student of the Jaffes who espouses a seemingly opposing nihilistic/absurdist philosophy. She teaches them to disconnect their inner beings from their daily lives and their problems, to synthesize a non-thinking state of "pure being." Being lifted from their troubles, they wish to keep that feeling forever, yet she tells them that it is inevitable to be drawn back to the human drama, and to understand that the core truth of that drama is misery and meaninglessness. Catherine takes Alfred to his parents Mr (Bob Gunton) and Mrs Silver (Talia Shire) and demonstrates that Alfred's sense of betrayal come from his mother, who never cared for him when he needed them the most. When Alfred lost his cat, his mother was not there to console him. Nimieri is a watchman in Mr Silver's apartment complex.Feeling somewhat upset after realizing this, Caterine and Albert leave Tommy to go and have sex in the woods. Tommy finds out about the two of them being together and feels hurt, Caterine tells him that they found each other through all the of the human suffering and drama, Tommy rejects this idea and leaves them furious and lost.Meanwhile, in Brad's further attempts to undercut Albert, he and Dawn also meet and are influenced by Bernard and Vivian. However, his plan backfires when the detectives probe Dawn and him, causing Dawn to reject her superficial iconic status as a beautiful model and him to realize that his whole ascent in the corporate ladder is meaningless, as he has lived his whole life just trying to please others and not himself. Dawn starts to dress like a slob and makes advertisements which are drab and boring. In response Huckabees hires a new model Heather (Isla Fisher).All the story-lines collide when Brad's house is on fire. Tommy comes to put the fire out which has incidentally trapped Dawn inside, and in the process of saving her, the two fall in love. Meanwhile, Brad despairs at the destruction of his house, the symbol of his material success.Albert attains a sort of enlightenment when he synthesizes the two opposing outlooks of the Jaffes and Vauban to realize the cosmic truth of everything. By way of sympathy for Brad, who is now just as dejected and hopeless as Albert was at the beginning of the movie, Albert understands that he and Brad are no different, that everything really is inextricably connected, but that these connections necessarily arise from the often senselessly painful reality of human existence. Having realized this, he turns Brad toward Caterine, in hopes that she will help him as she did to Albert and Tommy.They speak later about everything that has happened to them, and Tommy forgives Albert for abandoning him. As the two think, Caterine and the Jaffes watch them, concluding that they can close both of their cases