When Kabluey is about a guy in a blue mascot costume with a giant blue football for a head, it's wonderfully absurd and charming. When it tries to deal with supposedly real people and their supposedly real problems, it's kind of forced and obvious. A strong performance from Lisa Kudrow, however, keeps the less artful moments of the film from dragging the whole thing down.
Leslie (Lisa Kudrow) is a woman with a two-story house in the suburbs, a husband off serving in Iraq and two little boys (Cameron Wofford and Landon Henninger) who are so out of control that Dr. Spock would have beaten them with a belt. Needing to go back to work or her kids will lose their health insurance, Leslie reluctantly calls in Salman (Scott Prendergast), her husband's sad sack loser of a brother. He'll stay and take care of Leslie's juvenile berserkers while she goes back to work at an internet firm devastated by the popping of the tech bubble.
Though Salmon, who confronts life with a blank look on his face, struggles at first as a caretaking uncle, he eventually shows some marginal aptitude for it. As soon as he does, Leslie feels her place as mother threatened and gets Salman a job at her work so he can help pay for daycare. Salman gets stuck in big blue suit that makes him look like a featureless, hydrocephalic Smurf and plopped along the side of the road to hand out fliers for office space in the internet firm's largely empty building.
Being a weird looking blue thing allows Salman to bond with his almost-feral nephews, interact with a sunken-eyed supermarket cashier (Angela Sarafyan), enrage an old woman (Teri Garr), discover that Leslie is having an affair with her boss (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and gain the confidence to act that he's lacked his entire life. The story then ends with one of those "happy, but really not" endings that actually works for this movie.
Every moment that Salman is in costume, Kabluey is funny, clever and visually entrancing. Every moment he's out of costume, Kabluey is just another indy flick trying to find humor in how much life sucks. The normal stuff isn't bad, it's just by the numbers and livened up only by Kudrow's fairly powerful performance in a cramped role and Conchatta Ferrell and Jeffrey Dean Morgan engaging in one of the greatest non-profane screaming matches in cinema history. It's Leslie's struggles with her husband's absence, her fear of being encroached upon as a parent and her adulterous diversion from her own unhappiness that are at the heart of this tale. Her character is missing for too much of the film, though, as it focuses on the shallow and undefined character of Salman. Kabluey is balanced between a character with plenty of depth but not enough exposure and one with plenty of exposure but not enough depth. If it had been about Leslie putting on the hydrocephalic Smurf suit, this movie would have instantly become 100% better.
Writer/director/actor Scott Prendergast created something intelligent, entertaining and even a bit touching. He tried to blend whimsy and ordinary and didn't quite make it, but got close enough to produce a movie that's well worth watching.
Leslie (Lisa Kudrow) is a woman with a two-story house in the suburbs, a husband off serving in Iraq and two little boys (Cameron Wofford and Landon Henninger) who are so out of control that Dr. Spock would have beaten them with a belt. Needing to go back to work or her kids will lose their health insurance, Leslie reluctantly calls in Salman (Scott Prendergast), her husband's sad sack loser of a brother. He'll stay and take care of Leslie's juvenile berserkers while she goes back to work at an internet firm devastated by the popping of the tech bubble.
Though Salmon, who confronts life with a blank look on his face, struggles at first as a caretaking uncle, he eventually shows some marginal aptitude for it. As soon as he does, Leslie feels her place as mother threatened and gets Salman a job at her work so he can help pay for daycare. Salman gets stuck in big blue suit that makes him look like a featureless, hydrocephalic Smurf and plopped along the side of the road to hand out fliers for office space in the internet firm's largely empty building.
Being a weird looking blue thing allows Salman to bond with his almost-feral nephews, interact with a sunken-eyed supermarket cashier (Angela Sarafyan), enrage an old woman (Teri Garr), discover that Leslie is having an affair with her boss (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and gain the confidence to act that he's lacked his entire life. The story then ends with one of those "happy, but really not" endings that actually works for this movie.
Every moment that Salman is in costume, Kabluey is funny, clever and visually entrancing. Every moment he's out of costume, Kabluey is just another indy flick trying to find humor in how much life sucks. The normal stuff isn't bad, it's just by the numbers and livened up only by Kudrow's fairly powerful performance in a cramped role and Conchatta Ferrell and Jeffrey Dean Morgan engaging in one of the greatest non-profane screaming matches in cinema history. It's Leslie's struggles with her husband's absence, her fear of being encroached upon as a parent and her adulterous diversion from her own unhappiness that are at the heart of this tale. Her character is missing for too much of the film, though, as it focuses on the shallow and undefined character of Salman. Kabluey is balanced between a character with plenty of depth but not enough exposure and one with plenty of exposure but not enough depth. If it had been about Leslie putting on the hydrocephalic Smurf suit, this movie would have instantly become 100% better.
Writer/director/actor Scott Prendergast created something intelligent, entertaining and even a bit touching. He tried to blend whimsy and ordinary and didn't quite make it, but got close enough to produce a movie that's well worth watching.