THE BIG KAHUNA (Lions Gate) Starring: Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, Peter Facinelli. Screenplay: Roger Rueff, based on his play HOSPITALITY SUITE. Producers: Kevin Spacey, Elie Samaha and Andrew Stevens. Director: John Swanbeck. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 90 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Raise your hand if the idea of a film version of a single-set, dialogue-heavy play sets your pulse racing. Keep it up in the air if you'd like to cross that with a story about the hard-knocks life of professional salesmen. Now both of you, seek immediate help from Liars Anonymous. Stage-to-screen translations are hard enough without dealing with the inherent limitations of a single location. And you can't imagine there's anything left to be said about salesmen that Arthur Miller didn't slap a copyright on fifty years ago. Technical stagnancy and narrative familiarity -- yep, sign me up for a double dose of that.
It's hard not to go into a film like THE BIG KAHUNA without fearing the worst, which makes it all the more impressive when it turns out to be a splendid acting showcase with a few eye-opening bits of wisdom. The story is set during one night in a Wichita hotel hospitality suite, where representatives from industrial lubricant company Lodestar Industries are throwing a little party-cum-pitch conference. Larry (Kevin Spacey) is the pro focused on landing a potentially huge account; Bob (Peter Facinelli) is the young research representative with more existential concerns; and Phil (Danny DeVito) sits somewhere in the middle, trying to balance his job with the big picture.
Screenwriter Roger Rueff (adapting his own play HOSPITALITY SUITE) writes the kind of snappy dialogue that actors kill for, and all three of the principal performers tear into it with gusto. Spacey is predictably sensational as the marketing rep for whom honesty has become a religion; there may not be a performer around who can be so pleasantly venomous. It is surprising to see DeVito match Spacey's stride in what may be his best film performance ever. Phil's voice of experience carries a regret that's almost tangible, turning his every utterance into something you trust implicitly as true and worth knowing. Facinelli has the least eye-catching role, but that doesn't mean he's a week link; it's just Bob's job to listen and learn. Between Spacey and DeVito, there's enough blistering comic dialogue to keep three films afloat.
There's also a surprising core of understanding in THE BIG KAHUNA about the nature of salesmanship. The film's hard-nosed philosophy -- which wraps God and industrial lubricants in one not-so-tidy package -- is likely to make plenty of viewers uneasy, but it's a challenging perspective on proselytizing as a question of product, rather than process. The subject proves to be only one of several on which Rueff offers insights that keep you hanging on his dialogue. It's the only way a talk-intensive film like THE BIG KAHUNA can work: Between the wicked wit and the provocative ideas, you're too afraid to miss something to let your attention wander.
Director John Swanbeck does have some trouble overcoming the inherent limitations of his setting. He's stuck in that one hotel room for 90 minutes, requiring him to have characters move the furniture around when something needs to happen besides chatter. He does include a trio of well-crafted fantasy sequences, including one that makes wonderful use of Facinelli's resemblance to a certain A-list star in a sequence involving fancy bartending moves. Still, it's essentially a film in which three characters take turns talking to each other, a set-up that's never going to produce the most visually arresting cinema. The only reason to watch THE BIG KAHUNA is not to watch it, but to listen to it -- to absorb some fine writing and the work of actors who know what to do with it. It's enough to remind you that solid execution trumps low expectations every time.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 lives of a salesman: 7.
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