# Good Burger (1997)

### reviewed by
Luke Buckmaster

    REVIEW: Good Burger
    By Luke Buckmaster (bucky@alphalink.com.au)

>From zero stars (bomb), to five stars (a masterpiece): One star

With every new children's film comes a regurgitated fear that lurks inside my hate-bone. A fear of plot failure and cornball acting. Of flat jokes - and even flatter dialogue. Yes indeed, these are the movies that squeeze every last gag from a worn out sponge - praying that the critics will label them as "kids material" so that adults will be blissfully ignorant of them. In Good Burger, a Nickelodeon film, my fears were back as I witnessed a tasteless, immature and half-fried glob of film-fat.

If that comment sounded a little farcical, then you'll have to forgive me - but Good Burger deserves it entirely. You see, I work at a McDonalds store (no joke). I know what it's like to accidentally open a packet of sundae mix at the wrong time and have it dripping off my body from shoulder to toe. I know what a burger looks like with a litre of ketchup on top of it, because I've dropped a container of it on one. I know the satisfaction of giving a hungry customer the meal he was been waiting on, just for him to say "Tell you're manager that he's fucking useless if he can't produce a Big Mac."

But I've still been able to look back and laugh in disbelief - at those good memories that were actually nightmares to experience at the time. But I look back on Good Burger in exactly the same frame of mind as to when I watching it - disgruntled, irritated. It's not that I have a deep and profound respect for my job (you don't get much as a burger cooker or chicken fryer), but rather that Good Burger had a potential gold mine of gags to play with but doesn't utilize any of them.

The basic scenario of Good Burger goes something like this: the lazy, self-seeking Dexter (Kenan Thompson) finds himself in dept of more money than he can possibly repay after wrecking his school teachers car on the first day of summer vacation. After much reluctance, he vows to get a job until the dept is paid off. Enter "Good Burger," a no frills fast food outlet that becomes the hippest place to be when extravagant worker Ed (Kel Mitchell) unleashes a secret sauce to the public. But the store's scandalous competitor, "Monolith Burger," will stop at nothing to get hold of the ingredients of Ed's sauce.

Dexter and Ed also find themselves in other unpredictable situations including being trapped in an insane asylum with their 77-year-old pal Otis (Abe Vigoda). This in particular is a cruel and insensitive scenario, which demonstrates the film's tendency to make fun of everything and anyone just for the hope of drawing a laugh.

The director, Brian Robbins (who co-created the Nickelodeon show for which the film is based, "All That"), is only partially to blame for Good Burger's lack of raillery and effective composition. In the end, it boils down to the team of writers responsible for All That - they have not succeeded to sufficiently convert the television show to the big screen. Whilst it may be appropriate to occasionally show a "Nickelodeon sketch comedy" style gag, too many becomes plain annoying - and if they aren't very good from the start - well, the fats in the fryer. If I want to watch an hour and a half of Nickelodeon, I'll arrange to get cable TV - but if I'm going to the cinema, I need something better. I need something that will hold my attention - something that is worthy of being on the silver screen in the first place.

I have no doubt that even my McDonalds manager, Steve, would be able to shed more light on this greasy, pointless film.

To give you some sort of idea of how bad Good Burger's gags come; I'll leave you with a scene involving Ed and an evil Monolith Burger employee:

Monolith Burger Guy: You better watch your butt! Ed: [Tries for 5 minutes, spinning round and round in circles] I give up. There is no way a guy can watch his own butt.

    Review © copyright Luke Buckmaster

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    bucky@alphalink.com.au

"How ironic - my crusade against television has come to an end so formulaic it could have spewed from the power book of the laziest Hollywood hack." --Sideshow Bob

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