The Slammin’ Salmon: This Ain’t Your Little Brother’s Little Brother Comedy! (Oh Wait, It Is.)

The Slammin’ Salmon—the
tremendously average new comedy from sketch collective Broken
Lizard—is about a group of young people who work at a big, glossy
theme restaurant called the Slammin’ Salmon, which is both seafood
themed (okay theme) and Michael Clarke Duncan themed (GREAT
THEME). Duncan plays Mr. Salmon (really?), a former heavyweight boxer
and bloodthirsty fucking madman who motivates his staff with chestnuts
like “I’mma beat the shit out of you and break all your arms!” (Hey,
employees! Time for quitting! Also, the concept of a lawsuit called on
its conceptual telephone, but you weren’t here, so I took a message,
and the message says, “FILE ME AND GET HELLA MONEY!”) Duncan—12
feet at the shoulder and crazy in the eyeball and a seemingly genius
ad-libber—is the funniest part of the movie. Everyone else is the
just-okay part of the movie. The movie is just okay.

With the exception of Super Troopers, which sets itself
apart by being such a transcendently excellent surprise, Broken
Lizard’s oeuvre (YUP) is definitely bro comedy. And stoner comedy. And
beer comedy. It’s dumb and gross and silly, and it sometimes contains
ladies’ boobs. Dudes like it. Your little brother likes it. But what
makes Broken Lizard better than your average little brother or
Farrelly brother or Wayans brother is that there’s no
malice—instead of a gay joke and a fat joke and a blond joke
stuffed into a hoagie with a nice Verne Troyer aioli (dwarf jizz! My
new personal low!), Broken Lizard sticks to victimizing bizarre,
unclassifiable weirdos of its own creation. Its gross-out jokes (“We
took a little trip to Ejacuador together”) have a winking
self-awareness, and there are moments of simple, bright absurdity
(“Maybe a virgin rum and Coke?” “That would just be a Coke.” “Ooh, that
sounds delicious!”). And at no point does a dwarf crawl up
Dane-Cook-in-a-fat-lady-suit’s butthole and then get farted out like a
human cannonball into a swimming pool full of more farts. And for that,
Broken Lizard, I thank you forever.