DVD Review: "The Slammin' Salmon"

Welcome to Cleon’s “Slammin’” Salmon restaurant, where the fish is fresh, mostly, and the waitstaff is like none other, whether that’s a good thing or not is up to the customer. All is great in the world of the Slammin’ Salmon until owner and former Heavyweight boxing champion Cleon Salmon reveals that he’s $20k in debt to the Yakuza. The restaurant has to earn that 20k in one night or else the store is going to be under new management. In order to motivate the staff Cleon offers a $10,000 reward to the top seller of the night and a broken rib sandwich to the lowest earner. As you can imagine this prompts some fierce competition and some hilarious situations. Among the staff are Guy, the self involved narcissist, Nuts, the weird one who’s barley keeping his multiple personality disorder in check, Connor, who is back to the restaurant after a short stint in show business on CFI: Hotlanta and a whole slew of others. This is the latest entry from Broken Lizard, the group behind such hilarious hits as ‘Beerfest’ and ‘Super Troopers’ as well as the infamous dud ‘Club Dred’. So which side of the road does Salmon fall? Is it on this side of ‘Beerfest’ or the lowly ranks of ‘Club Dred’?

Beerfest it ain’t, but to its credit it’s not as bad as Club Dred. The main problem with the film is its slow start and lack of funny. Really I didn’t laugh once in the first 30 minutes of the movie with the guys in Broken Lizard not providing any laughs in the first half. The main shining star of the movie isn’t even a member of the group, it’s Micheal Clarke Duncan. He’s shown before that he can pull of comedy but he really shines in this movie. Granted it’s a combination of the writing, which is great for his character, and his delivery of the lines that makes his character so great. The other hilarious aspect of the movie was Jay Chanderskar as Nuts…or I should really say Zongo his characters split personality. About ¾ of the way through the film its revealed that his character, who up to this point was just weird and somewhat annoying, has forgotten to take the meds that keep Zongo from coming out. Next thing you know Zongo is outselling everyone and delivering solid laughs every time he’s onscreen right up until he’s bare assed force feeding a customer a live fish. The interactions between Duncan and the pretty one, Mia, are downright hilarious after Mia’s face becomes a bit disfigured following a hot soup mishap. Many of the jokes in the film fall flat and/or are so tired you almost want to groan and say “Really?”, this is especially apparent after a customer asks one of the wait staff to hide an engagement ring in his girlfriends dessert with completely predictable results. There is a moment at the end where the movie successfully delivers some emotion that you just don’t see coming, and does so successfully…even if they rip it away moments later just as successfully, but I have to admit the hilarity in the way they did it.

‘Slammin’ Salmon’ comes out on DVD next Tuesday, April 13th and if you’re a fan of Broken Lizard’s style of comedy and you enjoyed ‘Beerfest’ or ‘Super Troopers’ you’ll probably enjoy this one. Don’t expect it to be on the level of the previously mentioned flicks but it’s enjoyable nonetheless. You’ll get some laughs and have some fun with it, I just don’t think it will be a movie that people will be quoting or even talking about a few months from now. To sum it up, ‘Slammin’ Slamon’ is far from a great movie, but one with some great performances and some pretty funny writing even if it is somewhat uneven.

2.5 Guttenbergs