# Big Kahuna, The (1999)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    THE BIG KAHUNA

     Reviewed by Harvey Karten
     Lions Gate Films
     Director: John Swanbeck
     Writer: Roger Rueff, from his play "Hospitality Suite"
     Cast: Kevin Spacey, Danny De Vito, Peter Facinelli

Some actors were born to play scam artists. Alec Baldwin as chief huckster Blake in "Glengarry Glen Ross." Ben Affleck in a similar role as Jim Young in "Boiler Room," Steve Martin as Jimmy Dell in "The Spanish Prisoner." Kevin Spacey as an industrial lubricants salesman, Larry, in "The Big Kahuna." There's one difference, though. In "Kahuna," written by Roger Rueff from his play "Hospitality Suite" and directed by first-time helmer John Swanbeck, Spacey comes across as huckster in the initial part of the story, the comic scenes. His con-man guise gradually fades as Swanbeck moves him into the second part: a deeper, more intense, more human portion of the narrative. By watching this remarkable staged play on the big screen, we leave the theater with more insight about the characters and, I dare say, more intuition about ourselves. Isn't this what good cinema is all about?

"The Big Kahuna" exhibits the typical structure of a theatrical drama--a group of people essentially locked up together in a room to work out emotional difficulties (a good example being Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in which a single family reveal with brutal honesty the causes of their tragic lives). Playwright Roger Rueff is no O'Neill, but in showing us his trio's long night's journey into day he cuts through their defenses so incisively that he reveals the goodness beneath one seemingly shallow man's bravado and the inanity behind a seemingly principled character's saintliness. An older man is the catalyst for the war between two opposing viewpoints of life, a referee in a 90-minute bout pitting people of contrasting philosophies in the ring, each taking something from the other that makes him a better person.

"The Big Kahuna" is set almost wholly inside a relatively small hospitality suite on the sixteenth floor of a hotel in Witchita, Kansas, to be the hub of a business party taking place in a few hours. Three marketing reps from a company selling industrial lubricants--middle-aged, fast-talking Larry (Kevin Spacey), the older Phil (Danny De Vito) and a nervous kid on his first real job, Bob (Pete Facinelli)--have been sent to the Midwest location to sell the company's product. Their major target is the president of a client corporation whom the trio are eager to snare into a big sale. The big problem is that the big Kahuna seems to be a no-show, but just as Larry and Phil despair, they find out from young Bob that this kid was talking to the man all night. He was not discussing lubricants, though; a practicing Baptist, Bob spent the hours addressing the nature of God with the corporate president.

"The Big Kahuna" turns our expectations inside out. As we observe the cynical Larry deliver quips about beautiful women and complaints about the cheap look of the room and the food; as we watch the newly divorced and troubled Phil reading a copy of Penthouse magazine before the party is to begin; we imagine that the hero of the evening will be young Bob, who is pure at heart, a young man who takes seriously the New Testament concept that if you lust after a woman you are as guilty as the man who actually commits adultery. Having gazed down his priggish nose at the "fallen" men with whom he is teamed, wearing a shining, metaphoric halo about his head because he discussed higher things with the client than plain old lubricants, Bob is jolted, absolutely stunned, to find that of the threesome, he is the one with the least character. How he comes to this cognizance should not be revealed in a review. The point of the movie is to have us indulge the threesome working on one another rather than on their clients and to discover how each of the three--Phil, who is tired and looks to another way of life now that he faces his mortality; Larry, whose repartee hits all the right comic notes; and Bob, who is so full of his upright self that he cannot distinguish character from cottage cheese--leave the hotel in the morning wiser, more attuned, more human. For a script this trenchant, director Swanbeck and the writer, Roger Rueff, could not have assembled a better cast than the extraordinary Kevin Spacey, the remarkable Danny De Vito, and, big surprise, newcomer Pete Facinelli who as an actor must have felt like the salesman he is playing. In a room with the two greats, he must have been most deeply affected by the key line in the story. The cynical Larry asks the kid, "You think you're ready?" to which Bob answers, "There's only one way to find out and that is to throw me into the ocean and see if I can swim." Larry's retort: "We are about to throw you off a cliff and see if you can fly." Bob does indeed fly as does the whole film. Well done all around.

Rated R. Running Time: 91 minutes. (C) 2000 Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com

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