The Big Kahuna

Starring:Spacey, Devito, Facinelli
Studio: Universal Studios
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Two salesmen (Danny DeVito and Oscar winner Kevin Spacey) and a company researcher (Peter Facinelli) set up shop in a hotel suite in Wichita, Kansas, on a business trip. They hope to sell their particular brand of industrial lubricants to the elusive Mr. Fuller. Spacey and DeVito are seasoned pros, while Facinelli is excited about his first business trip. DeVito is going through some kind of mid-life crisis; Spacey is all about the sale and little else; and the new kid is naive, moral, and extremely religious. Once the characters are established, nothing much happens. They talk. They prepare for their sales party, and they talk. The event starts, but the movie quickly cuts to the mess in the room afterward so they can talk about what happened during the party. Even when Facinelli is given an invite to hang out with Mr. Fuller at a private party, the camera stays behind in the hotel room to listen to Spacey and DeVito talk. Talk talk talk. Based on the play by Roger Rueff, who also wrote the screenplay, The Big Kahuna never really feels like a movie, probably because it's all talk and no story, set in a hospitality suite that increasingly feels like a prison. --Andy Spletzer

Product Description

Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey (American Beauty) and Danny DeVito (Get Shorty) star in this humorous story of three industrial lubricant salesmen at a convention where anything can happen and their careers can be made or ruined on a handshake. Now with their futures on the line, they must put their trust in a greenhorn sales rep (Peter Facinelli) as they pursue the ultimate sale, The Big Kahuna.

System Requirements:

Starring Danny DeVito, Kevin Spacey, Paul Dawson, Peter Facinelli

Directed by John Swanbeck

Running time: 90 minutes

Customer Reviews:

One of the best movies ever made!.......2007-03-27

For a movie that basically takes place in a hotel room the entire time this movie is great in every since of the word. I can relate to each of the three characters in this movie especially Kevin and Danny's roles.

How Suite It Ain't.......2006-10-27

As a rule, I enjoy films based on plays because they frequently retain the discipline of theatre and avoid the cheap, sleazy, lazy, and gratuitous attention-getting devices for which movies are so well known. These pictures often boast well-developed characters, evolving situations that reveal complex motives, thereby building drama, and carefully hewn dialogue. The Big Kahuna, sadly, is a horse of another color - like Glengarry Glen Ross without the edge, energy, and exquisite contrapuntal timing.

Roger Rueff wrote the play, and the screenplay, Danny DeVito and Kevin Spacey star, Spacey also gets credit for production. Peter Facinelli rounds out this threesome of industrial lubricant reps holed up in yet another gruesome hospitality suite, desperately hoping to score. DeVito and Spacey are both terrific actors, and they make wonderful foils for each other, so, on paper it looks promising.

The Spacey character is most central; consequently, his flaws draw the movie down most obviously. Spacey is simply too cynical, bitter, and hollow to be interesting; he's toxic. DeVito, by contrast, is living in a gentle state of benign despair, toying with suicide the way a child might tease a scab. The Facinelli character is truly cardboard, a symbol - young, idealistic, and a born-again Christian who radiates mindless idealism.

For Rueff, this is a concept play, with a didactic agenda. By showing two worlds colliding, crass commercialism and intense religious faith, he wants us to notice how similar they are - indeed, he'd like us to conclude that there is only the thickness of a blonde hair separating a man who passionately sells industrial lubricant on the floor of a convention center from a man who passionately sells redemption while wearing a dress and standing in a pulpit. The concept in itself is interesting, but Rueff "tells," and tells and tells, he doesn't "show" through his characters. It is this interminable leading by the nose that causes the film to fail.

DeVito almost makes the sale at the film's end with a really beautiful speech, but by then it is too late. Also - perhaps one off color industrial lubricant joke too many. Avoid.

Meaning Beneath The Surface!.......2006-05-20

Some art is made truly great by its ability to take something ordinary and show its hidden more-than-ordinary side. To this reviewers mind, that is one of the things - outside of excellent acting and good dialogue - that makes The Big Kahuna a spectacular work of art.

Translated from Roger Rueff's play, "Hospitality Suite," TBK lets us into the world of three salesmen of industrial lubricants before, during, and after, hosting a business party that could make or break their careers. One character is a veteran who is growing weary of the business world. Another is a middle aged 'natural born salesman.' The third is a rookie who is new to the whole thing and is (some would say) naive about the whole business process. Between these three divurgent personalities, sparks fly, waters are tested, and no one is left unscathed.

As said, sometimes art is made great by its abilty to show the 'beneath the surface' side of seemingly ordinary things. In TBK, a business party becomes the vehicle for exploring everything from how much 'humanness' is permitted into the impersonal world of business, what happens when religious ethics show up in the business world, and (?!) even matters of life, death, and whether either has any grande meaning.

Especially, religion is a large element of the film. The youngest character - the newbie - is a religiously committed baptist. The oldest character, by contrast, seems to be going through a crisis of faith and is "wondering about god" in increasing amounts. When an important big-whig doesn't show up to the party, one character urges another to "have faith... for once in your life." And the words "Jesus Christ" are bandied about as everything from a proper name to a nasty exclamation. If nothing else, the invocation of religion into a film about "making the sale" makes for a thrilling tension underlying the entire film.

Others have commented on the acting. All three characters - Peter Facinelli (the newbie), Kevin Spacey (natural-born-salesman) and Danny DeVito (the tired veteran) - all give outstanding performances. All three know their characters very well, making for very reallistic interplay. Despite my efforts, I cannot imagine these roles being played better by any other actors.

If you like films that make you think a bit, taking ordinary things and showing them from angles that make them appear new, then this film is one you should check out. Three characters, one hospitality suite in Wichita, KS, a business party that could make or break careers. Anything can - and does - happen.

Well done, but nothing really new in this familiar salesman story........2005-10-20

This 1999 film, which has the feeling of a play, stars Kevin Spacy and Danny DeVito. The setting is a hotel room in Wichita, Kansas. There's a convention going on and these two men are salesmen with a background of making sleazy deals. They need a deal right now because the company is in financial trouble. They're hoping that a major retailer will show up at the party at their suite. Their careers rest on getting his business.

There's a new salesman in the company though, played by Peter Facinelli. He's young and idealistic and very religious. He doesn't drink or swear and he talks about Jesus. Immediately there is conflict, as the veteran salesmen do their best to influence this new recruit. Problems ensue when the religious guy does get the ear of the retailer. But he only talks to him about religion.

The dialog is fast and sharp. The acting is excellent Some interesting questions are raised. What is salesmanship anyway? Is a product the only thing that can be sold? What about religion?

I enjoyed this film and do recommend it. But my recommendation is a mild one, mainly because there are no surprises and the theme is a little tired.

Deferential Meditation on Theistic Existentialism.......2005-09-15

"Have your masks and your ruses, that ye may be mistaken for what you are" ~ Nietzsche

This is one of those rare gems that draws me in everytime. It questions the roles and social masking inherent in the daily round of modern life that each plays a part in shaping while providing serious inquiry into it's spiritual pitfalls and parodies. Within the characters, the question is posed: what is behind our mass society, and where does conforming to its structures leave man? ..Not the impersonal, false man acting out his prescribed role within the crowd, but the true spirit of man which suffers endless indignities in silence in order to fulfill either an imposed or self inflicted role. How one addresses or ignores the imposition, and from that, how one's character is stunted or transformed.("the bestial dullness and habitual security which most men doze until they die" ~ Kierkegaard)

As DeVito's character says(paraphrasing)'the moment you lay your hands on a conversation in order to steer it, you're no longer a human being; you're a salesman making a pitch'.
It can be realestate, widgets, civil rights, or faith, it doesn't matter, because if you're not interacting with your fellow man simply to discover what's in his heart, what his dreams are, for no other purpose besides that, than you're no longer earnest, you're not being thoroughly honest because you're seeking to shape and impose.

Other reviewer's have already outlined the story, so I won't reiterate. Suffice it to say, the title, "The Big Kahuna," of course alludes to God, and ironically uses a rather banal situation as a vehicle to examine what and how we perceive God to be, and how those perceptions shape our existence whether or not our third-eye-spiritual-awareness is foremost within our interactions and choices.

The character structure and dialogue is rich with revealing observations that most of us, depending upon where the viewer is within their particular path, will readily identify with. The casting is perfect as each actor realistically portrays three common personality archetypes: the overzealous, naive idealism and indoctrination of inexperienced youth. The middle of the road "business as usual" can-do man, who largely uses his career to stave off deliberating the vexing dilemmas of the heart and soul. And lastly, DeVito's character, whose life is immersed in events, feelings, and a long felt inner termoil now dawning with sense of prophetic calling. His character is truly in the thick of it, so to speak, and is presented as the primary, deliberative spiritual crux of how these three interact.

It's not as though Spacey's character isn't experiencing the inner storm as well, it's just that life hasn't yet brought him to that tipping point where denial becomes an unaffordable luxury. It's interesting to note the perceptive Nietzsche/Kierkegaard comparison between these two characters.

The atmosphere is intentionally sterile, mirroring the empty societal roles that people often chain their lives to, and the point being, at face value, so much of this movie appears to be much less than what it actually is.

At the emotional climax of their involvement, all three confront and reveal themselves, how each approaches faith, perceptions, their acceptance and even reluctance to embrace their own and the other's inevitable fallibility. There's a great deal more to this moving picture than meets the eye.

Average customer rating:

One of the best movies ever made!
How Suite It Ain't
Meaning Beneath The Surface!
Well done, but nothing really new in this familiar salesman story.
Deferential Meditation on Theistic Existentialism

The Big Kahuna
Starring: Danny DeVito , Kevin Spacey , and Peter Facinelli
Director: John Swanbeck
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00003CXIM
Release Date: 2000-08-29

Amazon.com

Customer Reviews:

One of the best movies ever made!.......2007-03-27

How Suite It Ain't.......2006-10-27

Meaning Beneath The Surface!.......2006-05-20

Well done, but nothing really new in this familiar salesman story........2005-10-20

Deferential Meditation on Theistic Existentialism.......2005-09-15

Average customer rating:

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