The Big Kahuna

Plot synopsis:
Larry Mann (Kevin Spacey) and Phil Cooper (Danny DeVito), who are both experienced marketing representatives working for an industrial lubricants company, attend a trade convention in Wichita in the American Midwest. They are joined in their hospitality suite by Bob Walker (Peter Facinelli), a young man from the company's research department. Larry and Phil are close friends with a long history together. Larry faces urgent financial difficulties that he alludes to only obliquely; Phil has recently come through a recovery program for alcoholism. Bob, an earnest young Baptist, has few if any regrets. Larry explains that their single goal is to arrange a meeting with Dick Fuller, the CEO of a large company ("the Big Kahuna").
While the three wait in their suite for the convention downstairs to finish, Larry and Phil explain to Bob how to develop and discern character. They also make Bob the bartender for the evening even though he drinks infrequently. Larry remarks that as he has quit smoking, Phil has quit drinking and Bob is religious, it makes them "practically Jesus".
Even though he makes a poor bartender, Bob spends the evening talking to people. In doing so, he inadvertently chats with the Big Kahuna, who invites him over to a private party at another hotel. Larry and Phil excitedly coach Bob through their pitch on industrial lubricants down to an amount of information Bob can handle and supply him with their business cards.
As the pair wait for Bob, they reflect on the nature of human life. However, Bob returns to drop a bombshell: he used the time to discuss religion rather than pitch the company's product. Larry, dumbfounded, challenges Bob and leaves the room devastated. Phil explains to Bob that proselytizing is just another kind of sales pitch. He explains that making real human-to-human contact requires honesty and a genuine interest in other people. Phil gives his reason why he and Larry have a friendship: trust. He then tells Bob that until he can recognize what he should regret, he will not grow in character.
The next morning Phil packs his things. As Larry checks out, he sees Bob talking again to the "Big Kahuna" in the lobby. They exchange a knowing smile suggesting Bob is using his time with the Big Kahuna more judiciously. The soundtrack during the credits is "Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen)", a setting of an essay by Mary Schmich.

Tags: philosophical

Review:
Bottom line is, I'll long remember Danny DeVito's touching, understated performance.He and Kevin Spacey (Phil and Larry, respectively) play experienced industrial lubricant salesman who've been sent to a convention in Wichita.
Facinelli is devout, Spacey is not, DeVito rides in the middle lane and tries to keep the peace.Whether or not they actually make the big deal plays second fiddle to the give-and-take relationship of the 3 very different men.
The writer and director (Roger Rueff and John Swanbeck, who've never made another film) know how to give Spacey his big scenes and they REALLY know how to let DeVito play everything in expressions and tone.
Based on a stage play called 'Hospitality suite', The Big Kahuna contains only 3 main actors in this movie who all give powerful performances.Spacey as the no nonsense take no prisoners step on em when he's down salesman, DeVito as his colleague who's had enough and thinks he's wasted his life going from nameless towns, and boring hotel rooms, and the young up and coming Peter Facinelli as the 6 month newcomer who is like a babe in the woods, but has a strong spiritual side and stronger convictions than anyone else.Spacey is great as always, and Facinelli is very believable as the devout Baptist.
Kahuna scores high!This movie has just great dialogue, and some incredibly memorable lines most of it coming from Spacey who keeps hitting Facinelli over his head with his sharp brute and dirty yet smart mouth.
Though essentially little more than a stage bound version of the play, `Hospitality Suite,' the film entitled `The Big Kahuna' earns distinction for its sharply delineated characters and the finely wrought performances of its three main actors.
In fact, the stage origins of the film are evident in the fact that the action rarely extends beyond a single set  a hotel suite in Wichita, Kansas in which three salesman are gathered for a convention  and the fact that only four people are even assigned speaking parts (and even the fourth is a mere walk-on bellboy).
All the other people we see serve as a kind of silent backdrop before which the three principal players enact their complex personal drama.Kevin Spacey, in a truly brilliant performance, plays Larry, a middle-aged, sardonic salesman who sees life strictly from the perspective of a hardcore cynic and who, consequently, runs roughshod over his two business associates with his acerbic wit and hardnosed bluntness.
This three-character movie, based on the play by Roger Rueff, deals with salesmen who are somewhat impatiently waiting for a very important business client - a.k.a. The Big Kahuna - on whom the fortunes of their company rests.
If they don't land the contract, of course, then they're all sunk.Larry (Kevin Spacey) and Phil (Danny DeVito) are the salesmen, and Bob (Peter Facinelli) is the marketing guy.
Only the other night whilst watching an episode of Taxi did I remember seeing a film with Kevin Spacey and Danny Devito about six years ago, there was just one problem, I couldn't remember what it was called, hours turned into days, sleepless nights became more sleepless and I still couldn't remember, but I did remember thinking it was rather great.
Well imagine my surprise upon venturing into my local poundland and finding a movie called Big Kahuna featuring, you guessed it Kevin Spacey and Danny Devito, with the biggest grin on my face, the feeling that I'd achieved a minor accomplishment, a 12 pack of Dorito's and some scented bin liners I approached the checkout, paid and promptly headed home.
A pound, one whole English pound for a movie I would gladly pay twenty for any day, because this is truly a great little movie, granted not much really happens and settings nothing new, but when you've got such fantastic performances from a fantastic cast there can be no complaints, Dany Devito has rarely been better, this disaffected soul is genuinely someone you can feel for and completely side with, Kevin Spacey is, well Kevin Spacey and lets face it that has never been a bad thing, every time he talks you listen, Peter Facinelli gives a very subtle but no less engrossing performance, but on the whole the real star is Roger Rueff, the script is just beautiful with great line after great line flowing from the mouths of a great cast, it really makes you want to see it on the stage.
And the combination of a lively script and a heavyweight cast delivers the goods, Danny de Vito is strong and (in the most interesting role) Kevin Spacey is excellent; Peter Facinelli is OK, but his part offers less scope to the actor.
They just talk, although the Christian guy does shove one of them into a food tray."Kind of hard to see how this got made, but if you get a pair of actors like Spacey and DeVito for the 2/3 of the cast, maybe you can sell it.
THE BIG KAHUNA (2000) **1/2 Kevin Spacey, Danny De Vito, Peter Facinelli.
(Dir: John Swanback)Kevin Spacey, arguably one of our finest actors performing today and with a recent Oscar win as Best Actor in the Best Picture of the Year, `American Beauty', has talent to burn and in his current display of subtle, nuanced brio he takes a step down in this indie satire that he produced, as a pet project.Spacey stars as Larry Mann, a fast-talking, smug and perhaps too sharp for his own good marketing salesman for a midWestern industrial lubricant manufacturer who is one of three fellow travelers setting up a much anticipated greet/meet with an important client (the eponymous moniker he uses as a mantra to signify the underlining of its significance) in the unlikely hotel suite in Wichita, Kansas.Also on board are his best friend and longtime associate Phil Cooper (De Vito in a wonderfully low-keyed, yet bluntly hewned turn) and green recruit Bob Walker (Facinelli, who I am hard pressed to keep from comparing him to a Tom Cruise manque, and proved wrong I might add by his performance that requires full concentration and total believeablilty for his task at hand), who contradict the self-assured Larry, who has convened the trio on their cramped luxury accomodations, by being there for one sole purpose: land the grand account.What makes the story intriguing is the cutting dialogue lobbed with perfection by its players that manage to raise it above a watered down David Mamet parable about men bonding (and unbonding as the case remains) and the cunning skill it takes to be a businessman and shirking one's individuality for the almighty buck.
That's when the film on itself nearly capsizes.Basically the storyline unfolds like `Waiting For Godot', the three salesman have set up a cocktail party for their meeting with this red herring of sorts, and what ultimately comes down the pike is he shows but unknowingly to Larry and Phil, has had a heart to heart with the young Bob.
Realizing they only have one shot when Bob casually describes a warm conversation leading to an invitation to an exclusive gathering late in the evening, Larry and Phil persuade their cohort to ingratiate himself into the good graces of their client-to-be which results in an unlikely turn of events: namely the subject of one's self-beliefs (i.e. what one considers important and in this case it is Bob's straight-arrow image and his strong will in being a faithful, God-fearing man who loves his wife and believes there's more to life than this account).Spacey and De Vito, reunited from `L.A. Confidential' make a nice comic team as they try to make sense of their lives, particularly the latter's downward spiral since his pending divorce and sudden sense of getting out of the business, leaving the former flummoxed and later, to a fault, self-discovery that it may have been too late.There are some comparisons to a Billy Wilder sense of responsiblities here and the stagy direction by theatrical trained Swanback (the piece was performed onstage as well) but that only enhances the nicely conveyed characters on screen.
Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito and Peter Facinelli star are three industrial lubricant salesmen at a convention in Wichita.
DeVito, Facinelli and Spacey did an excellent job acting in the movie.
Three lubricant salesman are staying at a hotel in Wichita to lure the most powerful man in the district (The Big Kahuna)...The three men are Kevin Spacey; a slightly beaten man who is seemingly flippant about failure...Danny DeVito; an exhausted individual who is seeking some kind of spirituality in his life, and Peter Facinelli; a young and maverick salesman who lives by the straight and narrow and turns to Jesus for answers!!
The acting skill and technique of Danny deVito and Kevin Spacey stand out loud and clear in every frame and word of the puzzling dull character study of people no one cares about.
It's a deep movie containing only three actors and filmed entirely in a hotel room.However, Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito prove what truly great actors they are.
The film is almost entirely confined to the room, played over the course of a day and night.Liking it means you're going to be able to find Spacey's ironic patter to be more than empty flourish, the greenhorn not to be unbelievable and annoying as a character (a religious idealist in sales must be like finding a puritan call-girl), while preferably getting something out of the philosophical discussion pitched to us as deep.
This movie, which I enjoyed largely because of the amazing performance given by Danny DeVito, talks about how if you find yourself leading in a conversation, then you're not learning about the other person, you're marketing.Well, the author does just that in the unusual speech Phil gives Bob in the last 15 minutes of the movie.
Watching Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito banter back and forth through a room may sound like a good single scene in a film but when that one thing is expected to carry an entire film, it loses steam quickly.
That's the excuse for this "character study" of a film in which Spacey and DeVito portray salesmen and Peter Facinelli portrays a newly hired research engineer.
The three of them spend the entire night (but thankfully for the viewer, just an hour and a half) in a hotel suite discussing a possible big sales deal with a potential client who's known only as "The Big Kahuna." With these people discussing the same subject in the same setting throughout the film, it's obvious that this film is probably trying to be another "Twelve Angry Men" but it doesn't come within spitting distance of that film's success..
"The Big Kahuna" is based on a play, but without being told, you'd probably know; the movie has all of three actors and one set.
Danny Devito, Kevin Spacey, and newcomer Peter Facinelli do excellent acting work, but in the end their talents are wasted on a play that should never have been brought to the screen.
Danny DeVito, Kevin Spacey and Peter Facinelli puts in mind- and trouser-blowingly good performances, that will make any actor think twice before they take on this script (it being based on Hospitality Suite, by Roger Rueff).And speaking of which, you will not often see Kevin Spacey be out- acted by anyone, but DeVito puts in a performance that would shake gods to their foundations (fittingly, as you may come to understand).
Danny DeVito is really good but truly great is Kevin Spacey, though his character in the movie is still the least well developed one.
Along with Spacey, as fine (and versatile) an actor as there perhaps ever has been seen, the two are a throughly interesting duo.This filmed "stage play," (set in Wichita yet), features two salesman, Danny's "Phil" and Kervin's "Larry," tired, disillusioned, not very happy - examining their lives.
The story, with young Peter Facinelli as "Bob," their young "apprentice, provides the kind of dialog as found in work by Pinter, Williams,etc., and films like the harsher "Glengary Glen Ross" and the gentler "My Dinner with Andre." Bob is a naive, simple, born-again Christian, in counterpoint to the thoroughly cynical and brash Larry, and the more thoughtful, but equally droll, Phil.They are scrabbling at the convention to effectuate a "make-or-break" type of deal (industrical lubricants are their wares), but this is secondary to the interaction among the three, and the interesting view of the many dimensions to the relationship between long-time colleague played by Danny and Kevin.Interesting to note, that although scenes are mostly within the hotel suite, filming actually was done in Wichita, as portrayed.This is a good 9* representation of this genre, and if your type of entertainment, well worth the viewing..
He is disgusting about hard comments of Larry to Bob.The movie is purely constructed with the dialogs.A couple of lessons supposedly can be extracted of the film about how a young man must affront the usual problems ( professional and personal ones) in the life.
The importance to acknowledge the errors committed in order to improve the character and just listening to other people's points of view, the difference between a real dialog and just propaganda.A good work of Spacey and DeVito, linking in the end credits with the famous (during 1999) "wear sunscreen" speech/song..
Many of us aren't aware of it, we don't  know it but we all have something to sell; be it lubricants, religion,teachings, opinions, our views, our politics, in summary: ourselves.The Big Kahuna crosses three characters who represent three generation age gaps namely: The first a young man starting out his professional life full of hopes, dreams and principles exactly the way many of us started out.
This makes all of the difference.And this is not a fatal problem, if this wouldn't necessarily occur to the character in the film, but the born again new guy stands toe to toe (rhetorically) with Kevin Spacey's war hardened sales veteran throughout the entire movie.
To sum up this short independent film, which is about an hour and fifty minutes, three salesmen; Larry Mann (Kevin Spacey), Phil Cooper (Danny DeVito), and Bob Walker (Peter Facinelli) are at a convention in Wichita, Kansas.
Their main objective is to find "The Big Kahuna" to endorse their industrial lubricant products, which will be by far their #1 sale.I'll be frank, this movie has absolutely no action or any suspense at all.
Kevin Spacey's character is a salesmen that seems to have much knowledge about business with his friend of many years Danny DeVito.
Their objective is to find the most lucrative client who, in the business, is referred to as the "Grand Kahuna" or "Big Kahuna" Screenplay is built around three main characters Larry (Danny Devito), Phil (Kevin Spacey) and Bob (Peter Facinelli).
It is only these three characters that ever appear in the big screen throughout the entire movie and the whole thing takes place in one hotel room.
I can honestly say I wouldn't have seen this play, which must be great, so I'm glad they did make it into a film."Hospitality Suite" is, I imagine, one set-the hotel room-and only needs the three characters: Larry (Spacey), Phil (DeVito), and Bob (Peter Facinelli).
We all know how great Kevin Spacey is but what really impressed me was that I saw Danny Devito act like an adult for the first time.
Since this film is base on a stage play, 90% of the movie takes place in one room.
Well, because The Big Kahuna still looks like a play and not a movie, for it all takes place in a single hospitality suite, you see.
I hadn't noticed this in Spacey movies before, but I think The Big Kahuna will probably affect anything I see him in in the future and probably not in a good way!
If u like theater, character dramas, or just great dialogue pure and simple, then this film is a must-see.The "memorable quotes" listed on this site doesn't even quantify how many good one-liners, scenes, or 'pearls of wisdom' this movie has.
De Vito gives the best performance of his life, Facinelli gives nice understated delivery and, well, Kevin Spacey does what he does best and he IS the man.So if you want to watch a superb story of true character and human emotions among men, watch "The Big Kahuna." If you just want to watch Spacey get angry (and, believe me, that is equally entertaining) this is also for you, but there's also the best film of 1999, "American Beauty." And "Swimming with Sharks.".
The end is stunning with Bob, the religious young man outmanoeuvring the experienced Larry (Kevin Spacey) and Phil (Danny de Vito).
The movie really does act like a play, in fact the whole thing pretty much takes place in the hotel room.
He claims Jesus is more important than either Dick Fuller or lubricants...It ends with a "Desiderata"-like rap, which further distances us from the interesting and well-acted trio.***** The Big Kahuna (9/16/99) John Swanbeck ~ Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, Peter Facinelli, Paul Dawson.
Following his Oscar win for "American Beauty", Kevin Spacey starred in the semi-cynical "Big Kahuna", about three businessmen (Spacey, Danny DeVito, Peter Facinelli) trapped in a Wichita hotel room expecting an important client.
"The Big Kahuna" gave me the feeling that the movie really resembled a stage play.The film is about two veteran salesman, Larry (Kevin Spacey), who is determined to make the sale of his career and Phil (Danny DeVito), who takes things not as seriously as Larry does.
They refer to the man that Bob spoke with as "The Big Kahuna"This is the first film that Danny DeVito and Kevin Spacey have done together since the classic crime noir "L.A. Confidential".
Spacey and DeVito give very good performances, but Facinelli is great as Bob.
Set in a single hotel room, Danny Devito, Christian Bale, and Kevin Spacey, discuss aging, faith, and what it means to be a salesman.