I don't generally like independent films since they typically have no budgets and vacuous, existential I'm-in-film-school-and-I'm-an-artist plots.
This one was pretty good, though and it's mostly due to casting really good child actors. Seriously, kids generally suck at acting. Especially the under-10 crowd. Their little brains just aren't wired to have the same idea for more than five minutes, much less their characters' motivations in relation to the plotline. The kid who plays the oldest child, Cameron Woffard, hasn't been in a lot yet (which will probably keep him from being a trainwreck later in life) but he was great in this movie.
Leslie (Lisa Kudrow) is a woman on the edge. Her husband has just been extended indefinitely in Iraq and she has two screaming little monsters at home who will lose health care if she doesn't go back to work but can't be left alone. (Which is actually total bullshit since military spouses and dependants are covered for medical and dental, but the point is that she's overwhelmed and out of options.) She ends up having to call her brother-in-law, Salman (writer and director Scott Prendergast), a well-meaning but clueless slacker, to come in and help out.
After having proved beyond a doubt that he is a lousy baby-sitter, even without her passive-aggressive bitchiness, Leslie gets him a job as the mascot for her company, a dot-com business that took a huge hit in the market and is now attempting to rent out their incredibly expensive office space with a skeleton crew, as a mascot handing out flyers.
The mascot is a blue humanoid with an oversized head. Cute as a tiny logo, bizarre as a six-foot costume. Having worn a similar get-up once upon a time (no, I will not share details), I can say with some certainty that the experiences he had are absolutely real. It is insanely hot, heavy, and the visual field is incredibly limited. Since my bosses weren't the spawns of Satan, I was required to take a break every half hour and had a handler to guide me around. Salman's boss (Conchata Ferrell, the acerbic maid from Two and a Half Men) leaves him on the side of a highway next to a corn field for 10 hours a day.
Slowly, Salman starts to realize that other people's well-being depends on him and begins taking more of an active interest in life. This is about the time he realizes that his sister-in-law is having an affair with her boss (Harry Dean Morgan).
There are some excellent cameos, especially from Teri Garr as a woman irrationally terrified of the Kabluey suit. It's well-worth a rental.
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