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“We should have gone to Bora Bora like the Pattersons,” says Delores (Sarah Goldberg) in Bubble & Squeak, writer-director Evan Twohy’s feature debut. A quirky, prescriptively surreal comedy in the vein of the late Jeff Baena, with a hefty debt to the two Sacha Baron Cohen Borat movies, it’s a very Sundance kind of funny that goes all in on a very bizarre premise. If you go with it, it will take you all the way, but for those with a low tolerance for cheerfully madcap bonkersness, its lean 97 minutes may well seem like an eternity.
The pre-credit sequence very quickly sets the scene. Delores and her husband Declan (Himesh Patel) are in sitting a nondescript, steely-gray office room, where they have been waiting for well over an hour. The two Americans are on honeymoon, preferring to go “off the beaten track”, and their wanderlust has taken them to a strange, never-named foreign country that appears to be a mix of South Korea and the former Yugoslavia. Declan has been reading up on local lore, revealing that there are 13 different dialects in the area, which also boasts a church made entirely of bundled hay.
Declan sniffs the air and detects a faint smell of cabbage. This is unusual, he says, because the people in this country hate cabbage so much they have banned it outright, having grown sick of having to eat cabbage—and nothing but cabbage—during a recent war. Funnily enough, this is why they have been summoned; when customs officer Bkofl finally arrives—Steven Yeun, speaking with a faintly Slavic accent—he informs them that they fit the description of an American couple recently seen walking through the airport with cabbages in their pants. “This is not a crime we take lightly,” he tells them.
Indeed not. In addition to a $70,000 fine, they will be beaten with a rusty bat and have the tips of their fingers chopped off. In addition, they must choose which one of them will be shot in a public display of execution. When Declan mentions international law, Bkofl goes temporarily deaf, imploring them to sign a confession and trying to play good cop, threatening them with his fearsome bad-cop colleague Shazbor. When Declan refuses, Bkofl goes off to fetch Shazbor, leaving Declan and Delores alone. Using the travel screwdriver in his fanny pack, Declan levers open the windows, and the pair escape. But what are those strange circular lumps in Delores’ jogging bottoms?
By this time, Bkofl has had no choice but to inform Shazbor, who promptly cripples him. Played by What We Do in the Shadows’ Matt Berry, Shazbor is a faithful party apparatchik and staunch defender of his country’s traditions. Surprisingly, Shazbor isn’t quite as big as the characters Berry might normally play, speaking with a soft, Werner Herzog burr. Reasoning that—“like the cat learns the song of the pigeon”—they must think, act and speak like the Americans in order to catch them, Shazbor insists that only English must be spoken in his presence. “When we’re finished with the Americans,” he announces, “they will wish they have never smuggled cabbages into their pants.”
From here, the story unfolds as a kind of road movie with no roads, as Declan and Dolores head for the border through miles and miles of forest. First they meet a local family, whose Hitler-jugend son Timotej fixes them with his piercing blue eyes. Unnerved by his disapproving gaze, the couple take off again, dodging mantraps, nets and something called the West Burmese Neck-Snapper before coming face to face with a ferocious brown bear. Except the brown bear is actually Norman (Dave Franco), a former cocaine smuggler who now trades in cabbages—“Red, napa, savoy, cannonball”—to feed the growing black market amongst the country’s young people. Delores falls for Norman’s debonair charms immediately, but Declan is suspicious; nevertheless, the agree to let him be their guide to a nearby train station, where they can cross the border.
If you’re still reading this and wondering what on earth happens next, Bubble & Squeak may well be in your wheelhouse, and though it may not be to everyone’s taste, Twohy’s film is never boring. Sometimes the dialogue can be a little arch, like the times when Delores asks Declan (and later Norman) for his thoughts on what he considers to be “the most disappointing dessert”.
For the most part, though, it’s an enjoyable satire on the old Americans-abroad nightmare movie—imagine Midnight Express in Kazakhstan—that is capably carried by its likeable two leads. Twohy can’t quite stick the landing, ending on an unexpectedly poignant note, and you can reasonably argue that it’s a one-joke movie. That joke, though, is often hilarious and even somewhat cautionary; you will never travel with cabbages in your carry-on ever again.
Title: Bubble & Squeak
Festival: Sundance (US Dramatic Competition)
Sales agent: Obscured Pictures
Director/screenwriter: Evan Twohy
Cast: Himesh Patel, Sarah Goldberg, Steven Yeun, Dave Franco, Matt Berry
Running time: 1 hr 37 mins
