Written by: PBF
The Slammin’ Salmon is the most recent film that has been released by the comedy troupe Broken Lizard. This one was directed by Kevin Heffernan, as opposed to Jay Chandrasekhar, who directed the troupe’s previous films.
“Slammin” Cleon Salmon is a former boxer that owns a restaurant called the Slammin’ Salmon (this will be the last mention of the film’s title). He bets the head of the Japanese Yakuza $20,000 in a rousing game of Japanese Albino Hunting and loses. He needs the money by tomorrow so a challenge is placed to the staff of the restaurant to make $20,000. The prize is $10,000 to the top waiter (don’t worry; it’s part of the comedy, not a plot error) while the punishment for the lowest performing waiter is a broken rib sandwich. Cleon is played by Michael Clarke Duncan, so as you may imagine, that is a large and painful sandwich.
Broken Lizard has a small collection of films including Super Troopers and Beerfest. It seems like the more movies they make, the less funny they are. I have not yet seen their first, Puddle Cruiser, so I can only speak from Super Troopers on. Broken Lizard films are not really “deep.” They basically involve a fairly simple plot that can plausibly involve at least 5 people in the central story. So you aren’t going to find too much that is very cerebral or even that much character development past basic character traits (asshole, romantic, lunatic, etc.) that rotate between actors film after film. That being said, something has to take me for a ride during my 90 or so minutes. Obviously, that would be comedy. I mean, if I am not really interested in who wins the contest, that’s cool, just make me laugh the whole time. This is where the film failed. There were some funny lines and moments, but it was really uneven, and most of the film was just not funny. I thought for a moment that it might be because there was too much interaction with other characters not played by Broken Lizard, but even when it was just them together it just wasn’t as funny as the earlier films. And the restaurant setting was not as funny as it could have been. The setting really was almost irrelevant in the sense that this type of contest could have happened anywhere. So there wasn’t a lot of restaurant humor, ala Waiting, because the fact that they work in a restaurant was not really the focal point. It was merely a setting to facilitate a contest in which everyone could act nutty in case a small audience was watching them. Each one of the cast individually had at least one funny line (except for Erik Stolhanske; all his lines were patently unfunny for some reason). Michael Clarke Duncan was funny more than he was not, but when he wasn’t, he really wasn’t.
There were some things that were just too silly, like all guests ordering 6 of every entrée, a character named Dick Lobo that was the creator of a show called C.F.I. Hotlanta and the constant use of the character name “Guy.” Honestly, it was just a big mess.
There were all kinds of random people in the film from Olivia Munn (oh my) to Lance Henricksen (trivia: shares a birthday with Puck). My favorite probably being a 5 minute scene with Jim Gaffigan.
I seriously hope that this descent into lackluster entertainment does not continue to go the M. Night Shyamalan route, as Super Troopers 2 has been announced and that is my favorite Broken Lizard film thus far. I would not say that this film is totally unwatchable, but I now understand why I didn’t know it existed until I saw it on Comedy Central one day.
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