‘Bubble & Squeak’ Review: An Absurdist Lark with a Bittersweet Aftertaste

Some words are just funnier than others. That’s why, for a deft bit of physical zaniness involving a spork in the mostly droll comedy Bubble & Squeak to work, one of the characters needs to say the word “spork.” It earned my laughter, but that moment is also potentially an acknowledgment that much of what precedes it in writer-director Evan Twohy’s film hinges on the nearly incessant repetition of a much less innately funny word: cabbage. Twohy gets a lot of mileage out of that word, and the contrast of its blandness with the furious emotions attached to it, but not quite enough to power the entire film.

Bubble & Squeak opens in a grim government office. Honeymooning American newlyweds Declan (Himesh Patel) and Delores (Sarah Goldberg) are being interrogated by Bkofl (Stephen Yeun), a border guard who seems at first to be going through the motions. But then he reveals that he believes them to be smuggling banned cabbages into “our country,” where cabbages have been outlawed since a devastating war during which the leafy green was the people’s only sustenance. Bkofl gives them a choice: sign a confession and choose which of them will be executed or get tortured and beaten to death by his superior, Shazbor (Matt Berry). Choosing neither, the pair steals out a window after Bkofl leaves the room and run for their lives.

The chase that follows is a rather low-key affair conducted in a register of bemused unreality. Despite his fearsome reputation, Shazpor leads a squad of police in pursuit with seemingly more interest in delivering deadpan monologues (which Berry delivers not in his usual plummy British pretentiousness but a slightly Werner Herzog-ian accent) than capturing their prey.

Declan takes the threat to their lives far more seriously than Delores, who’s more interested in finding joy and serenity during their pursuit than worrying about their likely execution. The unspoken joke underlying everything is that she actually is smuggling cabbages (they fetch a good price on the black market), and everybody who questions the large round lumps in her pants are met with an indignant “She has tumors!” from Declan.

The overall effect of Bubble & Squeak is akin to a Wes Anderson adaptation of a George Orwell novel, or perhaps Midsommar by way of Monty Python. The dire authoritarian cruelty of the mystery nation is presented as a string of comedic sketches that mostly hinge on the potential laughter generated by somewhat dated satire on backward Eastern European cultures (meaning generically Slavic accents, pre-modern peasantry, and outdated technology).

If all that it had going for it was this gonzo concept, Bubble & Squeak would be a pretty dire affair, but some unexpectedly rewarding humor nearly makes the film succeed overall. Patel and Goldberg commit to the ludicrousness of the bit with a stone-faced determination that pays dividends when contrasted with the over-the-top energy of performers in smaller roles like Dave Franco as a veteran criminal in a bear suit (“If it’s in the crucifer family, I will smuggle it”).

Twohy also leavens the absurdist humor with more serious character study by delving into the subtext of Declan and Delores’s squabbling. Their differences are quickly drawn: He’s the unimaginative data nerd who makes no decisions without exhaustive research while, she’s the slightly reckless type who yearns for a life of adventure and spontaneity. In the end, though, Twohy’s attempt to smuggle some sincerity into this largely absurdist tale shows that he isn’t especially committed to coherence. At the same time, the note of bittersweet regret that Bubble & Squeak ends on is bound to be, for many, preferable to another earful of “cabbage.”