I was never a big fan of Good Burger. Nor was I really a fan of All That, of which the 1997 movie was based on a skit. By 1994, Nickelodeon had changed from airing a wide range of American, Canadian and British programming to finding its own niche with Millennials. All That was an updated, less edgy version of You Can’t Do That on Television. And Christine “Moose” McGlade was in her 30s now.
So, I maybe caught Good Burger on HBO or Showtime in the late 1990s but didn’t really get too interested. It seemed like a family-friendly PG version of the obscure sex comedy Fast Food, in which Jim Varney plays a fast-food millionaire who goes to war with some slacker college dropouts who develop a sauce that works as an aphrodisiac. Varney made the movie in between Ernest Saves Christmas and Ernest Goes to Jail. If anything else, it introduced a lot of teenage boys to Traci Lords, who was breaking into the mainstream by then.
No, Good Burger has its protagonist Ed (Kel Mitchell) developing a secret sauce that is just good and tasty. Whether or not people have sex after they eat it all was off-screen. Ed is a simple-minded, slow-witted person but he’s kind and friendly to all which is part of his charm despite being someone who shouldn’t be a food handler. The movie had fellow teenager Dexter Reed (Kenan Thompson) having to work at the Good Burger restaurant to pay off damage during a traffic accident and he gets Ed to use the sauce on all burgers increasing sales. Of course, this causes competition from the more corporate Mondo Burger, who wants to ruin them.
It was a simple family comedy with a supporting role by Abe Vigoda, Linda Cardinelli, Sinbad and cameos by Shaquille O’Neill, Robert Wuhl and Carmen Electra. The movie was written by Dan Schneider back when he was just known as the Fat Guy from Head of the Class not the crazy monster he probably is now that drove Amanda Bynes to go mad and made Jeannette McCurdy literally dance on her mother’s graves, or ashes.
Thankfully, Schneider isn’t back for the sequel. Nor is director Brian Robbins, who hasn’t directed a movie since Eddie Murphy’s lackluster A Thousand Words, which notoriously spent close to four years on the shelf before it was finally released. Phil Traill takes over directing duties. His first movie was All About Steve, which also sat on the shelf for two years before it was released. But if that’s your first movie, that’s like saying you’re a film director because you operated a camera during a colonoscopy. This is also his first movie since the 2011 British romcom Chalet Girl, featuring a young Felicity Jones.
The plot is set 26 years after the events of the first one where Dexter has left the Good Burger restaurant hoping to be a successful entrepeneur. He claims to have developed a flame-retardant material and to demonstrate, using his own house as a test to investors including Mark Cuban. But it all burns down. So, with no one left to turn to for help, he contacts Ed who lets him stay with him and his family and resume working at the restaurant which Ed now owns.
The fact that Ed has common knowledge how to successfully operate a fast food restaurant as well as get married and have multiple kids is the suspension of disbelief you’re supposed to have with movies like this. Even a character from the first movie was left in a walk-in freezer for 22 years and managed to age when he very easily would’ve died of hypothermia in no time.
The plot involves another attempt by a bigger conglomerate to obtain the restaurant and close it down. Cecil McNevin (Lil Rel Howery) works as legal counsel for MegaCorp, whose CEO Katt Bozwell (Jillian Bell) is out to get Dexter and Ed for how they took down his brother, who was over Mondo Burger. Her idea is to install automated robotic workers to make the burgers and take the orders.
This does have a little commentary on the use if kiosks now in fast food restaurants, such as McDonald’s, to order. And there’s a lot of talk about the use if artificial intelligence everywhere you go. But for an unexplained reason, all the workers look like Ed. Maybe it’s because it’s easier on the special effects to just have Mitchell act like a robot. These aren’t the types of movies that you’re supposed to take seriously.
But for the most part, I don’t think people who have been waiting a quarter of a century for a sequel will find much of the movie entertaining. It has the same tone and feel of the first movie with the surprise cameos. The movie is written by Kevin Kopelow and Heath Seifert, who also wrote for All That and the show Kenan & Kel. However, it seems to focus more on Mitchell than Thompson who does his best to play the straight man. But you’d think after 26 years, Dexter might have changed a little. But he seems to be the same self-centered person he was in the first one.
This is mostly a movie for the fans. I think many newscomers to it might find it dull and boring. Mitchell and Thompson have the dynamic that Tim Conway brought to his movies with Don Knotts or on TV with Harvey Korman. And comedies don’t have to be all racy jokes about male genitalia like a Seth Rogen movie. Yet this has kinda lost all its taste. You might watch it and smile a little at the gags but they don’t really make you want to laugh a lot.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 