cannonclubonline
Not many things in life are worth watching that will inspire you to laugh at other people's crazy situations more than this film. Filmed in and around Austin, TX, this 86 minute film wins you heart by captivating you with a surrealistic story-line that depicts the players lives as pure chaos.Our hilariously funny young man Scott Prendergast makes his feature film debut as the lead role, director, and writer. Prendergast strikes pay dirt on this one, making it fun to be quirky and strange. This sort of life imitating art is perfectly balance off as Salman (Prendergast) is suddenly thrust into the middle of his sister-in-law Leslie's (Lisa Kudrow) miserable situation as a wife with two small bratty kids trying to make ends meet while her husband serves another tour in Irag.It's quite hard to pick up on but Suze (Teri Garr) is supposedly the mother of Leslie (Lisa Kudrow). This actually happened once before on Friends (1994) with Phoebe's character.The most disturbing things about this film, is that Salman has no way of controlling his two nephews, Lincoln (Landon Henninger) and Cameron (Cameron Wofford). It's amazing that the uncle didn't hurt this one kid who poured something like comet in his mouth while he was sleeping. Ironically, when Salman finally wears his blue dot suit to the birthday party. The children completely change when they discover that Salman is inside the suit. They win a new respect for Salman since they think he's some kind of super hero.Leslie finds Salman a job at her defunct DotCom company BlueNexion. We find that Salman has no idea what he has gotten himself into. Kathleen (Conchata Ferrell) steals the show as Salman's stressed out employer who recruits him to go out into the middle of the country wearing the company mascot suite and pass out fliers. Ferrell small fits of rage with cursing, and the tantrums she has while hiring Salmans is completely unexpected. Every moment she's on screen is absolutely hysterical. Even though she's supposedly playing this seriously, the comedic nature of it all was way too funny. Too bad she doesn't have a show like Carol Burnett did.Kudrow plays this role with dignity and believability. It's not what I'm certainly used to with her roles, however, it is played so well she should have gotten an award for it. You could almost, for a few moments feel the pain in her life and the trouble she faces as an abandoned and troubled mother. The strong supporting cast also includes Angela Sarafyan as the weird grocery-store clerk named Ramona. Teri Garr plays a believable deranged woman who lost her savings with BlueNexion and takes it out on the company's big blue mascot. Christine Taylor has a very small part as Betty yet she gets a higher billing than Teri Garr. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is pretty good as Brad, one of the corporate bosses who seems to have a few tricks up his sleeve with his office secretary, Leslie.Roddy Bottum's makes all that you see much better with his charming and unconventional score that keeps the movie rolling right along. Their seems to have a lot of time put into the closing credit by introducing 4 or 5 really short, but interest sets of animation using the BlueDot guy. Perhaps one of the funniest scenes of the film was one where the blue kabluey guy ganged up with cheese-girl taking Polaroids of Brad at the Motel with his other girlfriend.Don't miss this film if you can help it. There are many things enjoyable in life & this is one.
j-lacerra
I am not an expert, but I would assume that one of the first rules of comedy is that it be funny, or at least heart-warmingly humorous. Kabluey is neither. I did not laugh once during the 45 minutes of the picture that I watched. The blue suit joke drew one chuckle, and they beat that device into the ground, negating it.Is anyone truly as obtuse and socially comatose as the Salman character, played by Scott Pendergrass? 'Stupid is as stupid does', but it is not necessarily funny. Are any children as completely malevolent as these two boys? How could anyone find humor in watching these out-of-control brats assault everything and everyone they come in contact with? The mother character, played with an evil benign deadpan annoyingness by Lisa Kudrow, is rude, nasty, ungrateful, and mean. Kudrow, apparently a known television actress, is so unsympathetic in her character that she engenders outright dislike from the viewer.So, not only is Kabluey unfunny, but it is actively anti-funny. Please, do not depress and torture yourself with this steaming turd of a motion picture.
theskulI42
We have a question.....can you fly? Quirk. Outside of surrealism, there is no style of film that is more difficult to successfully pull off, and yet, so consistently greenlit and, most disturbingly, profitable, than the dreaded Quirkly Indie Comedy. Divorced from reality and big-studio pressure, half-wit hacks are free to pack their piffle with desperate actors clamoring for respect, ironic one-liners so overthought they don't consciously exist in our world, and hapless one-dimensional characters being mugged by their actors, dropped into 'wacky' situations and tasked as either Creator of Chaos or Straight Man for Double Takes and Eyebrown-Raising. This is the tough crowd into which Scott Prendergast presents Kabluey!.Norminally, the story involves a man named Salman (as I said, Quirky Indie Comedy, nobody is named Ellen or Abbie or Scott, they're named Juno and Olive and Salman, played by our writer/director, Prendergast), inept and fired from every job he has (most recently as a laminator who got fired for...overlaminating), who is contacted by his sister-in-law (Lisa Kudrow) after her husband's stop-loss National Guard duty in Iraq is extended and she risks losing her health insurance unless she can get a job. He is stuck in the role of caregiver for her two children, who are, predictably, hellions, and he, predictably, is in over his head. In fact, so much of this opening act is overly familiar that my first draft of this review, a review that shifts and fluctuates as a film marches on, had to be completely scrapped as its pleasures unfolded to me.The statement the film is making is far from new, a lot of croaking about faceless conglomerates taking advantage of the working man, but the way in which it's presented is undeniably unique. The reason for this is that I don't think social criticism was the foundation on which Kabluey! was to be built. Instead, I think the film, like many comedies, began its framework with an image in mind, a striking, or amusing, or emotional, or preposterous image. For Prendergast, that image is a man in a giant-headed, faceless, handless blue costume, handing out flyers on a desolate country road. Prendergast seems to share my glorious amusement pertaining to people in ostentatious outfits, their faces either stationarily affixed or wholly in absentia, and it would seem to me that he found this pathetic plush with the dirigible head amusing and decided to attempt to build a film out of it. It's a compliment to his imagination that he managed to turn this image into such an affecting little piece of work.The main idea presented here is of the weak-willed, the faceless, the socially inept, the poor, the put-upon being helplessly dominated by the uncaring, quixotic and powerful automatons. Be it the army, who pulled her husband back to Iraq, the rich women who all hate each other and relish the opportunity to put each other down once they relinquish earshot, and view the poor as non-people (despite being in his ridiculous, lugubrious costume, he goes completely unnoticed while eavesdropping on their conversations), the nonsensical business whose mascot he inhabits (his superior is the harried and hilarious Conchata Ferrell, who he meets after being informed there were no jobs, and who promptly gets into a shouting match with another man in a messy, empty room), or the leader of that company, who carries on an illicit affair with the desperate and lonely Kudrow. But there also remains another, less pronounced but equally important oppression, that of Salman by his brother. The film takes care to emphasize that in all of the family pictures Salman observes, the entire family is frowning, and once his brother finally returns, we are privvy to a quick shot of awkward brotherly strife hanging on the wall. Prendergast takes great pains to shoot him only in shadow, a spectre hanging over the proceedings, and there is a moment of subtle but spectacular sadness hanging over the shot immediately following this: The children, having finally warmed up to Salman, reluctantly approach their father, and looking back for that support that they had come to rely on Salman for, find the seat he previously occupied empty.Perhaps this is signifying that one should savor the small victories in life, because very rarely is the Little Guy able to rise up against The Man, on any level of Man-ness. Most tellingly, upon his brother's return, he immediately departs without a second thought. In addition, the film has a number of small vignettes, hardly-developed characters that appear in small moments throughout its runtime, be it Teri Garr, a passing motorist continually expressing her frustration at the iconography of the mascot's company, who put her out of business, wayward grocery store clerk Ramona, or the passengers of the bus Salman takes to work, taking a stand, or doing something small but meaningful to someone to which it would mean the world.I gotta say, this film has thoroughly exceeded my expectations (read the introduction paragraph in case you need reminding). An emotionally-engaging, frequently amusing (of both the subtly verbal and up-front Ace Ventura varieties), making an incisive, intelligent and worthwhile statement, all while being simply, quietly entertaining with breezy brevity. Score one for the f-cking little guy. Not bad for a movie about a dude in a funny costume, eh? {Grade: 8.5/10 (B+) / #2 (of 74) of 2008}
