Kabluey is a film that is charming while simultaneously being hopeless and leaving little-to-no optimism for the working/middle classes of Americans. Its bright disposition and sunlit environments give the aesthetics certainly more life than the characters have in them, but in the end, they live a sad, stale existence that will likely only get staler and increasingly more rough as time goes on. Even the ending doesn't make an effort to give us a silver lining. It's the kind of film that will make you dread the next morning, or even the forthcoming hours of the day, but will rub you on the back in hopes to give you some energy.The film is the brainchild of first time writer/director/actor Scott Prendergrast, who plays Salman, who goes to live with his sister-in-law Leslie (Lisa Kudrow) since her husband's term of duty in Iraq has just been extended. Salman gets the thankless role of being a caretaker to Leslie's demonic, degenerate children, who wreak havoc and cause chaos wherever they go. In the mix of this lurid situation, Salman accepts a job offering from Leslie, who works for BluNexion, an internet company facing an enormous decline in sales. The job comes with the vague title of "maintenance," and results in Salman having to work an untold amount of hours a day, for $6 and hour, wearing a featureless, bulky blue costume with an oversized-head on the side of a lonely country road. Why BluNexion's manager (Conchata Ferrell) believes the answer to their failing industry is to place a giant mascot on the side of a road maybe twenty cars pass on a day is benign but I can roll with it.When Salman is out of the costume, he lives a miserable existence that would push some to suicide. When Salman is in the costume, he brings a perplexing amount of joy to the people he encounters, especially children. There's not much playing he can do, however, when confined to the costume, due to his inflated-tube arms that can't even assist with passing out the flyers he must hand out to drum up business for the company.It seems unlikely and trivial, but Kabluey is a strong replication of the lack of excitement and happiness in many Americans' lives. Everyday Salman takes a bus full of eccentrics, one of them a woman who talks nonstop to a silent coworker, who just talks down about her when she isn't on the bus. The repetition of events may wear on viewers, which only means it would do the same in real life. I'm curious to know how many of them currently feel how Salman does in life.The amazing thing about the film is how easy it is achieves its morose state of being. When Salman discovers a heartbreaking secret Leslie is hiding, he, at first, doesn't seem so broken about it to do much. He still goes to work, gets paid, and takes care of the kids at night. Not until he sees the true predicament this is does he actually act. Salman is desensitized in a sector of the world which lacks all personality and life to the point where crucial, life-altering changes are viewed as frivolous until true thinking can be done.Prendergast writes and directs with pure confidence in the depth of his material, and his miserable acting is a plus too. There are times when I sincerely wanted to dive into Salman's head just to hear and see his motivations, thoughts, and internal processes of thinking since the character releases such little depth and color on-screen ("but what does he have left?" is the question). Here is a guy who can develop a career as a wonderful indie-character actor if he continues writing and pioneering great ideas like this one. Kabluey is a somber, effective take on the issue of drudgery in American life and what the so-called "American Dream" means in modern times. It's not often you think about characters this deeply long after a film concludes.Starring: Scott Prendergast, Lisa Kudrow, Conchata Ferrell, Teri Garr, and Christine Taylor. Directed by: Scott Prendergast.

a comedy. with bitter crumbs and a lovely character. slices from Kafka style and air of fresh images. parody, lesson about duty and picture of a family circle. axis - blue silhouette who can be symbol of corporatism, Facebook or public for a reality show. nothing surprising. in few words, Scott Prendergast does an admirable work. many nuances of frustration, good intentions and hope. fear, dark humor and inspired situations. a kind of Don Quijote. nothing else. and sparkles of nice story, almost a fable about present time. in fact, map of a travel, strange lands, new beginnings, essence of small things. and the way. out of basic limits.

When Kabluey is about a guy in a blue mascot costume with a giant blue football for a head, it's wonderfully absurd and charming. When it tries to deal with supposedly real people and their supposedly real problems, it's kind of forced and obvious. A strong performance from Lisa Kudrow, however, keeps the less artful moments of the film from dragging the whole thing down.Leslie (Lisa Kudrow) is a woman with a two-story house in the suburbs, a husband off serving in Iraq and two little boys (Cameron Wofford and Landon Henninger) who are so out of control that Dr. Spock would have beaten them with a belt. Needing to go back to work or her kids will lose their health insurance, Leslie reluctantly calls in Salman (Scott Prendergast), her husband's sad sack loser of a brother. He'll stay and take care of Leslie's juvenile berserkers while she goes back to work at an internet firm devastated by the popping of the tech bubble.Though Salmon, who confronts life with a blank look on his face, struggles at first as a caretaking uncle, he eventually shows some marginal aptitude for it. As soon as he does, Leslie feels her place as mother threatened and gets Salman a job at her work so he can help pay for daycare. Salman gets stuck in big blue suit that makes him look like a featureless, hydrocephalic Smurf and plopped along the side of the road to hand out fliers for office space in the internet firm's largely empty building.Being a weird looking blue thing allows Salman to bond with his almost-feral nephews, interact with a sunken-eyed supermarket cashier (Angela Sarafyan), enrage an old woman (Teri Garr), discover that Leslie is having an affair with her boss (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and gain the confidence to act that he's lacked his entire life. The story then ends with one of those "happy, but really not" endings that actually works for this movie.Every moment that Salman is in costume, Kabluey is funny, clever and visually entrancing. Every moment he's out of costume, Kabluey is just another indy flick trying to find humor in how much life sucks. The normal stuff isn't bad, it's just by the numbers and livened up only by Kudrow's fairly powerful performance in a cramped role and Conchatta Ferrell and Jeffrey Dean Morgan engaging in one of the greatest non-profane screaming matches in cinema history. It's Leslie's struggles with her husband's absence, her fear of being encroached upon as a parent and her adulterous diversion from her own unhappiness that are at the heart of this tale. Her character is missing for too much of the film, though, as it focuses on the shallow and undefined character of Salman. Kabluey is balanced between a character with plenty of depth but not enough exposure and one with plenty of exposure but not enough depth. If it had been about Leslie putting on the hydrocephalic Smurf suit, this movie would have instantly become 100% better.Writer/director/actor Scott Prendergast created something intelligent, entertaining and even a bit touching. He tried to blend whimsy and ordinary and didn't quite make it, but got close enough to produce a movie that's well worth watching.

If you ever find yourself at a retail video store by the likes of Blockbuster or Movie Gallery (if you're lucky enough to find one that's still open), the choices of movies you'll find are overwhelming and daunting. It's not that these stores don't have good movies, but 70-80% of the movies they do have you probably haven't seen because you've never seen them in theaters. Reading the description on the back doesn't seem like a good enough choice to rent the film, because the two hours you spend watching them may be wasted if the film is really bad. There are no credible reviews to guide you, and even if the film has a familiar face or two, that's not even a guarantee that the film will be good or memorable. The problem is not that there are a couple of these films, but movie stores nowadays have packed their shelves with so many of them that it's harder than ever to choose."Kabluey" is one of those films that gets lost in the video store shuffle of all the crappy films. It's unfortunate too, because "Kabluey" is an incredibly original film. It's quirky throughout, laugh out loud funny at times, and has the deadpan sensibility of indie film gems like "Rushmore" and "Napoleon Dynamite".The movie starts out by introducing Leslie (Lisa Kudrow), an Army wife whose husband is stationed in Iraq. He's not dead, but his absence still hasn't been easy with their two hyperactive, uncontrollable sons and no one to watch them without bills being sacrificed. Leslie then learns about her husband's 32-year-old brother Salman (pronounced how it's spelled), who doesn't have a job or a home for that matter.Salman, played by writer and director Scott Prendergast, is the 21st century version of a vagrant. He is a well meaning but inept guy with no skills or education of any kind, thereby differing in Biblical ways to his brother. He has nowhere to go and no money to get there, but he isn't exactly the homeless guy you see sleeping on the sidewalk. Salman arranges with Leslie to watch the kids while she works to pay off the children's Medicare and other expenses. Salman in turn would stay at her house and work until he is back on his feet.The premise so far sounds like a family comedy, but it's far more original than that. The story gets weirder, and therefore more unique, when Salman gets a thankless job handing out fliers in the middle of a barren street with few pedestrians. To make matters worse, he's in a heavy costume with limited visibility and not even the convenience of fingers to easily hand out fliers with.His costume is of Kabluey, a web icon belonging to a failed Internet company called BluLeXicon. Kabluey looks like the yellow AOL man, and has a hanging head to match his blue complexion. There's no shortages of ways it becomes difficult to wear that costume, although Salman tries harder than I would to pass out and organize the fliers. It's also funny when he discovers that the only way to use the bathroom is through the zipper in the butt area of the costume, resulting in his having to temporarily wear the costume backwards.There are many interesting subplots in this film, and they all come together very well to reveal a lot about the characters. The story is strange, but nothing seems sugar-coated about Kudrow's army wife situation. Kudrow plays someone who is understandably distressed, and looks it throughout the movie. She can't control her kids, and she has virtually no friends around to help her. Her situation is entirely understandable, and she's one of the best things about this movie.When I saw Prendergast, I couldn't help but think of Ben Stiller. It's not only because Christine Taylor, Stiller's wife and occasional co-star, is featured in this movie. Stiller seems the be the go-to guy when it comes to playing an incompetent slacker who won't grow up. Prendergast here, however, doesn't come off as a rip-off of Stiller at all. He has an originality to him that eradicates the Stiller comparisons successfully, and his character is as odd and appealing as this entire movie.There's no doubt that this film is odd, but it is very much a rhapsody of intangible qualities that made last decade unique. In this case, the bust of the Internet bubble (signified by the Kabluey costume), and the War in Iraq. These things have made last decade (and this decade so far) notorious, but have not been incorporated into any film I've seen so far, or at least not as seamlessly as this film has done. For a deadpan comedy to have those subjects serve as a backdrop could not have been easy, but somehow the film succeeds.The film has many inconsistencies and unexplained occurrences, with Teri Garr's recurring appearances being one of them. However, this film is the good kind of odd that could make it a cult classic soon. I'm sure people will find this movie after digging through the unimaginative, run-of-the-mill, Hollywood casualties that may be to blame for Blockbuster's demise, and they won't be disappointed.