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Variety
Who the Hell is Bobby Roos?
A Hummingbird Films (Spencertown, N.Y.) production, in association with Silverlight.
Produced by John Feldman, Roger Kabler. Executive producer, David Marlow. Directed,
edited by John Feldman. Screenplay, Feldman, Roger Kabler.
With: Roger Kabler, Iris Paldiel, John Powers, Anabelle Larson, Jacqui Malouf,
Angel Engel, Everett Tebben, Mel Kabler, Tony Faske, Mark D'Arco.
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By KEN EISNER
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Form and content find a just-right match in "Who the Hell
Is Bobby Roos?" an entirely improvised DV tale based on the real-life experiences
of topliner and co-scripter Roger Kabler. An astonishing impressionist, Kabler's
standup career foundered in the early '90s, when he began to feel overwhelmed
by his subjects. Pic -- which won the American Independent Award at the Seattle
fest -- could click with auds that really care about comedy, although rough
format and insider treatment may prove too esoteric for mainstreamers. Should
kill on DVD.
Like the title character, Kabler's star rose along with those of Jerry Seinfeld
and Tim Allen. He made frequent appearances on the latenight circuit, including
"The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and "Arsenio," and even
had his own failed network sitcom. Helmer John Feldman skillfully draws on clips
to flesh out the more exaggerated journey of Bobby Roos, whose identification
with his skittish subjects, particularly Robin Williams and Robert De Niro,
borders on the obsessive. He does a pretty mean Richard Dreyfuss, Al Pacino,
and Peter Falk, too. But he's in full "Taxi Driver" mode when Bobby
beats the living snot out of a heckler who pushes him too far.
As a flashback-explained result, the restless Roos is blackballed from every
comedy club on both coasts, leaving him with enough time to figure out that,
while De Niro and company can live without him, he can't spend even a day without
them. Eventually, he tries to freshen his old-school act, including a dead-on
Roberto Benigni. (In fact, that's the manner in which Kabler came scrambling
across the seat-backs after pic's world preem in Seattle.) But the freshening
isn't enough, and the people around Roos start to fear his ego has been altered
a smidge too much.
Roos' condition is further complicated when he meets a woman (Iris Paldiel)
who only responds to him as De Niro -- when she wakes up next to Robin Williams,
she literally tries to throw him out of her apartment.
In a snowbound New England cabin, when not hiding in a cardboard box, Roos starts
to embrace whoever he might actually be. And it helps when he gets a kind of
a benediction from his father, touchingly played by Kabler's real dad, who died
just after production wrapped.
Feldman, who previously helmed two well-received if virtually unattended features,
"Alligator Eyes" and "Dead Funny," has a flair for the morbidly
hilarious. Here, he gives Kabler plenty of rope with which to flail himself
but manages to leave viewers unharmed. Acting as his own d.p., helmer went with
an unusual technique, using up to a half-dozen video cameras to capture hundreds
of improv hours. He then edited that material entirely on his MacIntosh computer,
with output far more dynamic than the typical monologue-driven show provides.
Sheila Silver's tense score, which features pounding piano and probing clarinet
among other chamber instruments, helps hold the slivers together, and the overall
rhythm is brisker than heavy themes suggest.
Through it all, the sheer craft of Kabler's transformations -- the way he physically
becomes other people, as well as sounding exactly like them -- remains fascinating,
whatever one makes of the story or its slightly forced attempt to reach a happy
conclusion. As everyone knows by now, comedy can only end in tears.
Camera (color, mini-DV), Feldman, Riger Grange, Michael Raeburn, Heidi Draper,
Bob Fiske; music, Sheila Silver; sound (Dolby), Dick Kane; sound designer, Ben
Bates; assistant director, Will McKinley. Reviewed at Seattle Film Festival,
June 11, 2002. Running time: 93 MIN.
© 2002 Reed Business Information © 2002 Variety, Inc.
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