The Big Kahuna Review
by Allan Jenoff (jenoff AT sympatico DOT ca)May 14th, 2000
The Big Kahuna
Directed by: John Swanbeck
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, Pete Facinelli Running time: 90 minutes
My rating (5 star scale): **1/2
Larry (Spacey) and Phil (DeVito) are salesmen for an industrial lubricants company. They are hosting a hospitality suite at a convention and they desperately need to make contact with a potential customer, the big kahuna of the title. With them is Bob (Facinelli) who is from the engineering department and there to be the technical guy and mostly to tend bar. Unfortunately, Larry and Phil miss the big customer, but Bob talks to him and gets an invitation to a private party afterwards. For Larry and Phil this is the big chance and maybe their last chance.
By their nature, good salesmen must be good psychologists. And Larry and Phil reveal that they know a lot about human nature. We learn this as they analyze each other for Bob's benefit and even more so as they start to analyze Bob's motives.
All this talk is very interesting and I'm sure the play the film is based on is very good. But the movie is claustrophobic (with a few short exceptions it takes place in one small room) and it fails to make us interested in any of the characters with the exception of Phil. The writing reminds one of Mamet, but second rate Mamet. And the acting, with the exception of DeVito who seems to find some depth in his character, is two dimensional.
Spacey is a hot commodity these days and this film is getting a lot of hype. Don't be fooled.
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Allan Jenoff
Check out my web page at http://www3.sympatico.ca/jenoff/
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
