Kabluey
Directed by: Scott Prendergast
(Columbia/Tristar)
A lot of the humour in Kabluey—writer-director Scott Prendergast’s feature-length debut—comes from the film’s central conceit. When your protagonist spends much of his time in a hard-to-maneuver blue suit, it’s difficult not to mine the ludicrous costume for laughs. And so, while dressed as “Kabluey,” (the large-headed corporate mascot of a failing dot-com) dopey Salman (Prendergast) takes a pee out the back zipper of his getup, is attacked by an angry Teri Garr and—with the help of a guy in a cheese costume—attacks a CEO schmuck (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Consequently, it’s a credit to Prendergast—as an actor andas a writer/director—that the blue-suit gimmick isn’t nearly as annoying as it could’ve been. When well-meaning Salman isn’t advertising the office space in his floundering company’s hubristic, empty office tower, he’s helping his brittle sister-in-law (a stellar Lisa Kudrow) and bratty nephews (Landon Henninger and Cameron Wofford) while his soldier brother’s in Iraq. Kabluey‘s got its fair share of annoying “indie quirk,” but it has an undeniable sweetness, too. Salman becomes a protective totem for his family, and helps confused old men retrieve their trusty thermoses. It’s hard not to love the guy and his goofy-ass suit.
Lindsay McCarney
This article appears in Oct 2-8, 2008.
