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Web-Exclusive Review: The Slammin' Salmon

Alternative Press - Tim Karan on 12/10/09 @ 11:14 AM - altpress.com

COMEDY
THE SLAMMIN' SALMON (Anchor Bay)
STARS > Michael Clarke Duncan, Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stohlhanske, April Bowlby
DIRECTOR > Kevin Heffernan
RATING > 3/5
OPENS > DEC 11

After the back-to-back clunkers that were 2004's Club Dread and 2006's Beerfest, the Broken Lizard comedy troupe have returned with a film that restores at least some of the comedic glory they reaped in the wake of 2001's face-ruling Super Troopers. While The Slammin' Salmon doesn't quite hit the ingenious highs of that abiding cult classic, it also doesn't come close to the knee-scraping collegiate lows of Beerfest, a film so bad that we actually turned it off halfway through when we finally caught it on DVD last year. But it appears the BL crew may have learned from their recent missteps. The Slammin' Salmon is their first feature not directed by ensemble star (and The Dukes Of Hazzard director) Jay Chandrasekhar. Instead, Broken Lizard member Kevin Heffernan (who played the traitorous, donut-huffing super-pig Rodney Farva in Super Troopers) takes the helm, and the results are both refreshing and occasionally hilarious.

The Slammin' Salmon takes place entirely within a fictional Miami restaurant of the same name; it's owned by former heavyweight boxing champ "Slammin'" Cleon Salmon (Duncan, perhaps best remembered as the insect-breathing, death-row prisoner John Coffey from the 1999 film adaptation of Stephen King's The Green Mile). When Salmon runs up a hefty gambling tab with Japanese gangsters, he holds a contest among the restaurant's wait staff to pay off his debts: Whoever turns in top receipts for the night gets $10,000. Whoever turns in the lowest gets a "broken rib sandwich" at the business end of the champ's ham hock-sized fists. The Broken Lizard crew star as the foul-mouthed, accident-prone and mentally unstable staff, alongside Cobie Smulders (Robin Scherbatsky from CBS' How I Met Your Mother) and April Bowlby (Stacy Barrett from Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva), who scramble to undermine and out-screw each other in an effort to take home the cash and avoid the beatdown. Well-placed cameos from Vivica A. Fox, Morgan Fairchild, Heroes' Sendhil Ramamurthy and SNL's Will Forte go a long way toward helping viewers forget that the film's entire 90 or so minutes take place solely in one building. But it's the writing and acting of the Broken Lizard folks themselves (especially Erik Stohlhanske and Steve Lemme as fake-tanned douchebag waiters) that seal the deal, ultimately rehabilitating their reputation for comedic gold. And just in time, too: a Super Troopers prequel has been announced for 2011. --J. Bennett

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