Bluer Than You

If you’ve been feeling a bit blue lately, remember: things could be worse. You could have a low-paying gig as a blobular blue mascot standing on the side of a hot highway, passing out flyers.

This, in part, becomes the fate of Salman, the depressed and drifty protagonist of Kabluey, an eccentric indie comedy set to open later this summer. Written, directed, and starring first-time feature filmmaker Scott Prendergast, Kabluey follows Salman as he is summoned to the home of his sister-in-law, Leslie, played by a convincingly cranky Lisa Kudrow. Leslie’s husband has just been re-deployed to Iraq. She needs help taking care of her two hellion sons; Salman needs a place to crash.

But this jerry-rigged arrangement quickly begins to teeter. For starters, Salman has no idea how to parent. To make matters worse, his amusingly satanic nephews decide they despise their uncle and begin plotting his murder. Lastly, there’s Salman’s new job as the ridiculous mascot of a dying dot-com called BlueNexion. His duty is to pamphlet prospective renters of the company’s office space, all the while sweltering away in his bizarre blue costume.

As Kabluey, Prendergast shows off his comedic training as a Groundling by putting on a choice, Chaplineseque performance. Helplessly handless and eerily featureless, head drooping like an overripe blueberry, Salman trundles and trips his way to something like transformation. The suit becomes a kind of metaphor for his particular world: blue, claustrophobic, and supremely pathetic.

But like all superhero costumes, this one endows Salman with some unusual powers. After agreeing to work a children’s party, he becomes a huge hit (or at least until the pony shows up). More importantly, his anonymity inside the suit allows Salman to glean some inside information that will forever change his relationship to his sister-in-law.

The film boasts an unusually large roster of name actors. In addition to Lisa Kudrow, Conchata Ferrell (TV’s “Two and a Half Men”) stands out as Kathleen, Salman’s brassy boss. Christine Taylor (Dodgeball) does nice work as an elitist socialite. Jeffrey Dean Morgan (“Grey’s Anatomy”) plays Brad, Leslie’s caddish supervisor. Comedy legend Terri Garr is satisfyingly nuts as Suze, a former BlueNexion employee who lost her life savings to the company. Chris Parnell (former member of Saturday Night Live) appears as an over-anxious supermarket manager.

The film does suffer occasionally from a case of the cutes. The slapstick comedy sometimes sits uneasily against the more serious subject matter of a deteriorating household whose patriarch is away at war. But Kabluey is a likeable, ambitious effort whose askew point of view captures something of the sadness and absurdism of our own world right now.

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