The Slammin' Salmon Review

On to our number two review: The Slammin' Salmon.  This movie is brought to you by Broken Lizard, the same people that brought us such hits as Beerfest and Super Troopers.

The story sets around a fancy restaurant called (can you guess it?) The Slammin' Salmon.  It is owned by heavy weight boxing champion turned restaurant owner, Cleon "The Slammin'" Salmon (Michael Clark Duncan).  He comes into the restaurant one night to tell Carl, the manager (Kevin Hefferman) that he owes a Yuzaka member $20,000 after losing a bet.  Cleon tells Carl that he has till the end of the night to make the amount or else he'll break every bone in his body.  To accomplish this, Carl tell the wait staff (The Broken Lizard boys featuring the sexy Cobie Smulders and April Bowlby) that at the end of the night, whoever has raised the most money for the restaurant wins a vacation to an all expenses paid 5 star resort while the loser gets knocked out by The Slammin' Salmon himself.  This results in the waiters and waitresses going head to head for top bill the whole night and creating some great scenes between the desperate wait staff and the guests that come to dinner.

I have to say that the guys at Broken Lizard did it again with this movie.  I would have to say that this is in the top 3 of all their movies (the other 2 being Super Troopers and Beerfest). enjoyed most of the cast and it seemed like Broken Lizard sort of grew up in this movie.  They didn't seem like high school kids making any and every sex joke possible in this one.  It now seems like they're community college kids with their first apartment and checking account.  Saying that, you might seem sort of turned off if you like fart and penis jokes but don't worry, much like community college, there's still immaturity there.

The one thing that surprised me about this film was Michael Clark Duncan's funny.  Granted I know he's going off a script, but he brings life to the character.  Between mispronouncing any word with more than one syllable to being completely oblivious to things around him, he steals nearly every scene he's in.  There's even a clip at the end credits (as a deleted scene) where he's yelling about how he fears nothing but the dark and says, "YOU KNOW I'M AFRAID OF THE DARK!  HAVEN'T YOU SEEN THE GREEN MILE?!  I'MMA SCARED OF THE DARK!"

Overall, if you like the work of Broken Lizard and can find a theater showing the movie, I'd say go catch it.  There are some times when it seems like there's too many people in the scene and it's a bit muddled, but otherwise all the characters work well (or this case complete chaos) together.

Rating: RIFF IT

Till Next Time,

Mike