April
28, 2000 | Kevin Spacey strolls into The Big Kahuna with
so much cocksure swagger, you might think he's been typecast in the
title role. But don't jump to conclusions: He may have enough off-screen
clout to have gotten this indie movie made, but he isn't trying to cruise
along in a star vehicle.
Spacey
plays Larry, a glad-handing marketing rep for an industrial-lubricants
firm. During a convention in Wichita, which he finds only slightly less
tolerable than Purgatory, Larry operates a hospitality suite with two
colleagues - Phil (Danny DeVito), a long-time friend and fellow road
warrior, and Bob (Peter Facinelli), a fresh-faced new employee - who
are supposed to help him curry the favor of an important business executive.
(Yes, you guessed it: This potential client is the real "Big Kahuna.")
Not surprisingly, things don't go according to plan.
Sometimes
profanely funny, sometimes intensely dramatic, The Big Kahuna
is a richly amusing and provocatively insightful film that builds to
a profoundly powerful cumulative impact. What begins as a conventional
satire of salesmanship and American Dreaming gradually evolves into
something appreciably deeper, as characters talk about faith, friendship
and nagging fears about meaning and meaninglessness.
Bob,
a born-again Christian, assumes he has all the answers. Larry is amazed
and enraged when he finds his younger colleague has been talking about
religion, not business, with the Big Kahuna. The older and wiser Phil
delicately questions whether pushing Jesus isn't just as dishonest as
other hard-sell techniques.
Spacey
comes across as a live wire charged by alternating currents of cynicism
and desperation, turning from sardonic wit to savage fury in the space
of an anxious heartbeat. (A nice touch: During Larry's moments of fever-pitch
fretfulness, Spacey appears to channel his friend and mentor, Jack Lemmon.)
DeVito is every bit as terrific, if not slightly better, affectingly
underplaying Phil as someone who's wistfully aware that his hard-won
wisdom is a result of having had to learn from mistakes. Facinelli does
a fine job of tempering the arrogance of youth with the sincerity of
a true believer.
Screenwriter
Roger Rueff adapted The Big Kahuna from his own play, and he
obviously doesn't care if we know this. Indeed, he has done next to
nothing to "open up" the material, preferring to remain inside
the hospitality suite for virtually the entire movie. Rueff covers familiar
ground here, but he mines the territory for fresh insights, and takes
some intriguing detours along the way.
Just
as important, Rueff gives everyone a fair chance to make his case, and
refuses to score easy laughs with cheap shots. The three characters
are fraught with symbolic weight - early on, you grasp that each guy
represents a progressive step in the same direction, or a different
stage in the same life - but they are written and played with enough
passion to emerge as flesh-and-blood individuals, not metaphorical devices.
First-time
filmmaker John Swanbeck employs a variety of visual stratagems to indicate
tonal and emotional shifts within the claustrophobic setting. Even so,
Swanbeck - who previously directed Kahuna for the stage, with
other actors - has too much faith in the script, and too much respect
for his cast, to needlessly complicate things with superfluous "cinematic"
flourishes. Gradually, in the manner of someone slowly opening a door
to admit daylight into a pitch-dark room, he unveils the insecurity
beneath the bluster, the calculation behind the innocence, the verities
beyond the uncertainties.
The
beauty part is, The Big Kahuna doesn't need any flash and filigree
to sell these revelations as the stuff of compelling drama. Even in
this era of computer-generated spectacle, the most impressive special
effect that any movie can offer is a glimpse inside the human soul.