The Big Kahuna Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)May 14th, 2000
PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"
Based on Roger Rueff’s play “Hospitality Suite,” The Big Kahuna is the first film to be made by two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey’s new production company, Trigger Street Productions. Kahuna is set almost entirely in a sixteenth-floor hotel suite in Wichita, where three industrial lubricant salesmen for Lodestar Laboratories contemplate the meaning of life while pitching their wares to prospective clients over hors d'oeuvres and an open bar.
Any film that features salesmen who love to gab risks being compared to David Mamet’s far superior Glengarry Glen Ross. But Kahuna borrows ideas from more films than just Mamet’s masterpiece. Since the three principal actors are crammed into a hotel room for most of the picture, your mind will likely wander to those rascally kids in The Breakfast Club. When they talk about the greatest salesman in Lodestar history, you can’t help but remember the Saturday Night Live skit where the guys talk up a legend by the name of Bill Brasky. And when an important client (“The Big Kahuna”) doesn’t show up to their meet-and-greet, you get a little taste of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.”
Offering little else but dialogue, Kahuna is one of those films where each character experiences some kind of major life change by the time the closing credits start to roll. Bob Walker (Peter Facinelli, Supernova) is an eager, young, Bible-thumping newlywed with no experience and even less personality. Larry Mann (Spacey, American Beauty) sees a lot of his younger self in Bob, even though he’s become a cynical, middle-aged bully. Phil Cooper (Danny DeVito, Drowning Mona) is already over the hill, dreads the prospect of watching his life come to end, and chooses to fritter his time reading pornography.
As the three bicker about work and religion, it feels like you're trapped in the room with them – and I don’t mean that in a good way. Kahuna begins and ends fairly promisingly (aside from the obnoxious Baz Lurhmann song "Everybody's Free [To Wear Sunscreen]” playing over the closing credits), but the middle is very slow. It’s still worth a trip to the theatre just to see Kahuna’s first-rate acting. Spacey hasn’t skipped a beat since his [insert award name here] winning performance in Beauty. DeVito delivers what could be his best performance to date, and Facinelli makes the most of his biggest part yet.
1:30 - R for adult language
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