SDFF: Kabluey

Last night the San Diego Film Festival kicked off with its premiere film, the comedy Kabluey. I had kind of expected either something totally strange and off-putting, or something really low-budget and amateurish, or a combination of those two. But the film was professionally done and totally hilarious. I imagine the budget was helped when writer/director/star Scott Prendergast landed Lisa Kudrow to star. Kabluey will be making a tour of the festivals, and it will open in art houses nationally in the spring.

The film centers on a mother with two terrifying little boys (my wife asked that we stop off at the vasectomy store on the way home after the movie) whose husband is a National Guardsman called up to Iraq. As the film opens, we learn that his tour has been extended yet again by President Bush. The mother, Leslie (Kudrow), is pretty much out of gas. She’s been taking care of the boys for a year now, and she’s in danger of losing her health insurance if she doesn’t go back to work, but then, she can’t afford childcare, either. Her mother-in-law proposes that she ask her ne’er-do-well brother-in-law, Salman, to come and help out with the kids. No one is pleased with this, but Leslie simply must go back to work. Salman’s early attempt at babysitting goes no better than the rest of his life, which is to say, terribly. Leslie decides he can better help by bringing some money in, so she gets him a job as the corporate mascot for her company, a sort of Enron/AOL/Dot-com-bust hybrid called BlueNexion. This is when the film gets good.

Salman’s job is to stand out on the road handing out flyers inviting people to rent out office space at BlueNexion headquarters. He must wear the BlueNecTion mascot costume, a kind of blue version of the AOL mascot, but with an absurd melon-sized head and a Smurf-blue uniform. Prendergast’s performance while wearing the suit is the heart of the movie, and it’s just great. His own droopy bearing is accentuated by the huge blue head, so large it droops forward in a perpetual depressed slouch that accentuates the ridiculousness of everything Salman has to do.

There are other plot points surrounding Salman’s nephews, Leslie, the CEO of BlueNexion and so forth. The ending is even a moving moment in which a solider returns home from war (that is not a spoiler, trust me). But for me, the film is all about the costume, which becomes a kind of character itself. If Kabluey turns up at the Landmark theaters in the spring, go see it.

One of the best parts of going to a film festival is you get to meet the writers and directors and cast. Prendergast turns out to be charming and down-to-earth, which is cool for someone who seems like he’s about to make it in show biz. Movie-goers also got cool trinkets, like this snazzy Kabluey keychain, which was much in demand after the show.