Kabluey (2007)

Tags

Christine Taylor, Comedy, Conchata Ferrell, Drama, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kabluey, Lisa Kudrow, Movie, Scott Prendergast, Teri Garr

wipe that smile off your face, mister!

PG-13

Scott Prendergast, Lisa Kudrow, Conchata Ferrell, Christine Taylor, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Teri Garr

Brad: Leslie, call the police, we’re being attacked!!
Elizabeth: By cheese!!  And that blue thing is trying to kill us!!

While his brother is away in Iraq, Salman (Prendergast), a rather dimwitted fellow, comes to stay with his wife and 2 kids.  This doesn’t work out too well, and the wife, Leslie (Kudrow), wants Salman to leave.  He doesn’t have enough money for a bus ticket, so he takes a job as a corporate mascot, standing on the side of the road trying to hand out fliers.

You know, I’m starting to think that the term “quirky”, as I saw this film described as, is basically a way of saying that it tries to be funny, but fails.  Maybe that’s not always true, but it sure seems like a word that’s thrown around a lot these days with hopes of excusing the more annoying aspects of a movie.

If that’s the case, then I’d say this movie is quite quirky to begin with before transitioning into more sentimental, and somewhat more successful, territory.  Lisa Kudrow is generally likable, and she can deliver a comedic line pretty well, but her character is sort of horrible.  Her children are demon spawn nightmares that run around screaming and breaking things all the time, with seemingly no disciplinary action taken by mom.  I guess their behavior is supposed to have something to do with their dad being gone, but the movie doesn’t really explore that very well.  I guess Leslie has just given up on parenting, but again, that isn’t tackled head on.  Instead, the movie focuses on Salman standing out in the middle of nowhere, in a cumbersome blue outfit, hoping that cars speeding by will stop and take a flier advertising space for rent in an office complex.

These scenes just go on and on, and include several odd and annoying appearances by Teri Garr as a former employee of the company that Salman’s costume is the logo of.  She basically just screams, blows her car horn, and tries to run him over.

There’s some good imagery at times, and a few funny lines and interesting plot developments here and there, but for the most part, it all seems pretty pointless.  Plus, it never really takes on the main issues at hand.  The child actors aren’t good enough to really show realistic effects of having a father away at war for over a year, so that issue can’t really be explored.  We start to get into what’s going on with Leslie a bit deeper, but suddenly everything is resolved and the movie ends, and it doesn’t seem like it earned the final feel-good scenes.

Mascot costumes should have fingers.

10 – 1.5 for some failed comedy attempts – 2 for just glossing over the possibly interesting story elements – .9 for the boring stretches in the middle = 5.6

Expired (2007)

Tags

Comedy, Drama, Expired, Jason Patric, Movie, Samantha Morton, Teri Garr

you were SO good in Speed 2...

R

Samantha Morton, Jason Patric, Teri Garr

Jay: Alright, I’ve got a lot of stuff I need to do before work tomorrow.
Claire: Oh…
Jay: Is that allowed??
Claire: No, it’s fine…um…it’s been great.  I wasn’t expecting anything anyway.
Jay: Well, good.  Just keep it that way, we’ll get along just fine.

Two parking enforcement officers, Claire (Morton) and Jay (Patric), meet and develop an awkward attraction to each other.  Claire is meek and reserved, while Jay can be insulting and tends to have angry outbursts at the citizens who complain about him giving them a ticket.  The two struggle as Claire won’t stand up to Jay’s verbal abuse, and Jay can’t deal with his growing attraction to Claire.

Yeah, not a lot going on here.  Not that there has to be a lot of plotting, but maybe some character growth wouldn’t hurt the movie.  It’s basically an hour and a half of Jason Patric being a jerk and Samantha Morton just taking it in stride.  Morton is likable in just about everything I’ve seen her in, and she’s almost too likable here.  But I guess it would take someone this impossibly nice and meek to put up with a jerk like Jay.

While I did laugh, at times, at Jay’s unbelievably insulting comments, I had to imagine that if I saw a relationship like this in real life, it would make me sick.  Perhaps that’s the point, and that’s the joke, but…it wasn’t funny enough.  It just ends up not being very enjoyable to watch.  It reminded me a bit of the movie Eagle vs. Shark, with one character constantly putting down a much nicer character.  That movie had more interesting stuff in it, though.  This movie was watchable, but just sort of…blah.

It’s not a bad movie, but it’s not pleasant or interesting enough to really recommend.  Unless you really love Samantha Morton.  Or maybe if you hate her as well because you get to watch her being insulted for most of the movie.

Parking tickets are not about enforcing the law or public safety.  They’re about making money.

10 – 3 for the general unpleasantness of the relationship – 1 for little to no character growth – .5 for seeming overlong = 5.5