One accusation perennially levelled at Sundance is that it’s a purveyor of a million jazzy variations of the ‘Quirky Indie’ flick. Some make that quirk their defining characteristic (Hello, Sasquatch Sunset), and cabbage-based crime caper Bubble & Squeak certainly falls into that camp. This absurdist comedy about a couple on the run accused of smuggling cabbages in a country in which they’re contraband is undeniably weird, but lacks compelling characters, an engaging narrative, and actual jokes.
Honeymooning couple Declan and Delores (Himesh Patel and Sarah Goldberg) find themselves detained in an austere government office in the unnamed country they’ve made their destination. They’re accused of smuggling cabbages into the country, the vegetable having been banned since a devastating famine in which it was the only source of food. They’re offered the choice of signing a confession and one of them being executed, or to undergo torture and beating. Declan is incensed. Delores is actually smuggling cabbages. With neither option enticing, the newlyweds leg it out of a window with the country’s customs officials in pursuit.
The overall feeling of Bubble & Squeak is like watching Infinity Pool directed by Wes Anderson, or an unusually benign Yorgos Lanthimos. The vague Eastern European setting with the odd customs and possibly murderous natives might look wildly retrograde at first, like an Orientalist viewpoint has been dragged westwards far past the Urals like a supermarket freezer door. But really, it’s the assumptions of the blithely oblivious tourists and a disrespect for other cultures that is being prodded here, albeit fairly limply.
One’s appreciation for Bubble & Squeak will depend on what kind of mileage you can manage on infinitesimal variations of a few running gags. One of the more successful is the innately funny Matt Berry playing Shazbor, the bureaucratically sadistic head of customs, with a Werner Herzog accent. The others prove to be more gas guzzling. It doesn’t take long for the central joke, that Delores’ trousers are obviously stuffed with cabbages, to sputter to a grinding halt. By the time the couple arrives at a church made entirely of straw you feel like writer/ director Evan Twohy is inadvertently the Big Bad Wolf of his own project.
Frustratingly, there are promising threads that could be teased out here. The black market on cabbages is driven by the country’s youth who didn’t live through the war and therefore lust for the vetoed veg like the sweetest forbidden fruit. There’s a side-eye at generational difference and how the passing of older generations allow threats long vanquished to rear their head again, but it’s simply not explored in any detail. Similarly, the obvious lack of commonality between Declan and Delores (he steadfast and risk-averse, she adventurous and impulsive) is simply a plot point rather than an emotional driver, and one which doesn’t even keep to its own characterisation given that this honeymoon to somewhere ‘off the beaten track’ was suggested by Declan.
Patel and Goldberg are beacons of professional dedication given that they’re like Dr No scrabbling for purchase, burdened with a self-consciously monotone style and dialogue that gives them nothing to play with. Berry has more fun as Shazbor, mainly through sheer charisma, and Dave Franco dances away with his scenes as a fellow smuggler in a bear suit, but these twinkles of brightness merely throw into relief just how badly its main duo are served.
A fun concept in search of a decent film, Bubble & Squeak has little to offer beside its initial premise and a deluge of stilted quirk. It wastes a fine cast, and fundamentally fails at the deadpan style of comedy at which it aims.
Screened as part of Sundance Film Festival 2025
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