Movie Review: Good Burger

Hey everyone, welcome to another movie review courtesy of Old School Lane. With the financial success of Harriet the Spy, Nickelodeon Movies decided to work on their second feature film. With the huge success of All That and Kenan & Kel, Mike Tomlin and Brian Robbins had decided to release a feature film based on a sketch of All That and have it star Kenan and Kel. That movie was called Good Burger and it was released on July 25, 1997.



Based on the sketch from All That, Good Burger was about a cashier named Ed who worked at a fast food joint called Good Burger. He was very dimwitted and would get many customers' orders wrong and cause a lot of mayhem. Since Saturday Night Live had hits with their movies based on skits like The Blues Brothers, Wayne's World, and Coneheads, Tomlin and Robbins decided to try as well with this movie. So after over 15 years later, does this movie still have its sizzle or it's not well done enough to be served to audiences everywhere? This is Good Burger.



We start off with Ed (played by Kel Mitchell) at the cashier placing orders wrong like he usually does. Then all of a sudden, the burgers that had been prepared for the customers come to life talking to him.



Ed finally wakes up realizing it's a dream and finds out that he's going to be late for work. He grabs his rollerblades and skates his way to Good Burger. The customers wait angrily to order, but the other employees can't take them since they're waiting for Ed. Ed gets into mayhem while skating for Good Burger; he crashes into things, he interrupts a girl skipping rope, and more. When he finally makes it to Good Burger, the customer asks for his order, but Ed stupidly confuses the sentence completely. He gets fed up and lets them know how his excitement about the new fast food restaurant Mondo Burger opening up.

Meanwhile, a high school student named Dexter (played by Kenan Thompson) is waiting for his class session taught by Mr. Wheat (played by Sinbad) to end. With that ending, he can finally start his summer vacation. After class ends, Dexter and his friend drive on his mother's car discussing about how they're going to spend their vacation. All of a sudden, Ed appears out of nowhere and causes Dexter to accidentally crash into Mr. Wheat's car. With Dexter not having a license, not telling his mother about crashing her car, and having to find a way to get $2,500 to pay for her and Mr. Wheat's car, Dexter has no choice but to get a summer job.



Dexter finds a position working on the new Mondo Burger. But having difficulty assembling the burgers, he gets fired from the owner and C.E.O, Kirt (played by Jan Schweiterman)



With Dexter fired, he goes to Good Burger for lunch thinking about what to do next. All of a sudden, Ed walks up to Dexter bringing him a milkshake. He sits down and tries to find out about Dexter's problem. Dexter, not knowing that Ed was the main cause of Dexter's crash, explains about coming up with money to pay for a huge bill and getting fired from his job. Ed convinces Mr. Bailey (played by Dan Schneider) the owner of Good Burger of giving Dexter a job as a deliverer.



The night of the grand opening of Mondo Burger causes a huge crowd to gather around it. With Kirt and his crew coming into Good Burger saying that now that they're opening, Good Burger will now be out of business. For the next two days, Good Burger goes through a slow route with no customers approaching. With Good Burger in danger of shutting down, Mr. Bailey decides to buy a Mondo Burger to see what the competition is. It turns out that their burgers are twice the size of a Good Burger. They have no idea how it got that big, but they need to think of something to get customers again.



When the shift is down for the night, Ed runs into one of the co-workers Otis (played by Abe Vigota) and Dexter flashbacks to the day of the accident realizing that it was Ed who caused it. The next day during their lunch break, Ed and Dexter sit together despite Dexter not wanting to. Then the scene in which Ed puts two grapes on his nose and sings "boopity, boopity, boopity" commences.



Then afterwards, Ed takes out his secret sauce to have with his lunch. After accidentally spilling some on Dexter, Dexter tastes it, finds it good, and starts developing an idea. If they could add Ed's sauce to all the Good Burgers, then the customers will start coming back. The sauce becomes a bit hit and Good Burger starts getting all their customers back.



Even Shaquille O'Neal makes a cameo appearance eating a Good Burger saying that it's good. Oh Shaq, you poor marketing athlete, you. You'll be in anything, won't you. Don't worry, it'll be over soon with Steel.



With Good Burger a hit again, Kirt decides to find out what's in the secret sauce, start using it on their burgers, and put Good Burger out of business once and for all. First, he goes over and tries to convince Ed to work on Mondo Burger. But he refuses. Then the next step is hire a beautiful woman named Roxanne (played by Carmen Electra) to charm him enough to tell her the secret sauce recipe.



Ed decides to have a double date with Roxanne, Dexter, and another co-worker named Monique (played by Shar Jackson) at the golf course. Things don't go well for Roxanne as she continues to get injured by Ed. With no luck getting the recipe, Kirt decides to take it to extreme measures. The next night, Kirt and his crew sneak into Good Burger and add shark poisoning to the secret sauce. When they get caught by Otis, they tell him their plan of adding the shark poisoning so that the customers will get sick from eating it. Then they'll never want to eat at Good Burger again and it will eventually shut down. While Otis threatens to call the police, Kirt and his crew capture him and send him away to an asylum.

Meanwhile, Dexter talks to Monique about the possibility of another date, but she says no. When asking why, she pulls up a piece of paper which happens to be a contract saying that for the amount of money that Ed makes for his sauce, Dexter takes 80% of it. Monique tells Dexter that he's using Ed to make extra money.



Dexter tries to tell Ed about the contract when a dog appears wanting food. Ed gives the dog his Mondo Burger, but doesn't eat it. When he gave him the Good Burger, he eats it. Dexter finds it interesting that the dog didn't want to eat the bigger hamburger patty from Mondo Burger, despite being twice the size of a Good Burger. They realize that they must be adding something to the burger, so they decide to sneak into Mondo Burger to investigate disguising themselves as women.



When they get access to the kitchen, they see the cooks adding an illegal liquid called Triampothal to the Mondo Burgers. That's the cause of their huge sizes. After getting caught by Kirt, he ships them to the asylum alongside Otis. Otis tells them about Kirt adding shark poisoning to the secret sauce at the chance of causing many people sick. They know to escape the asylum before Good Burger opens.



Ed comes up with an idea to escape the asylum. Changing the radio to the song "Knee Deep" by George Clinton, Ed and the patients dance to it.



Eventually, Dexter knocks the guards unconsious, grabs the keys, and head upstairs to one of the rooms. When hearing the alarm go off, one of the patients helps by throwing Dexter out the window and landing outside the asylum. Otis and Ed jump out, steal an ice cream truck, and have a big chase scene with the doctors. They were able to lose them throwing ice cream at their viewing windows and crash into Mr. Wheat's mailbox.

With Dexter, Ed, and Otis making it to Good Burger on time before anyone ate the sauce, they decide to sneak into Mondo Burger again, steal a can of Triampolthal, and call the police. Dexter stalls Kirt and his crew while Ed would steal the can and run to the police station.



Ed accidentally spills a whole bottle of Triampolthal to a batch of ground beef. Ed then comes up with an idea and pours more of the Triampolthal on the beef. With that happening, the burgers grow in size and begin exploding. Then the place stars to shake and all the customers run out of Mondo Burger. The building eventually gets destroyed and the police arrive to arrest Kirt. Dexter couldn't believe that Ed had pulled it off. But Ed explained that it was easy. If Ed would have taken the can, he would have most likely been caught. If he didn't get caught, then Kirt would have hired his lawyers and it would have been a huge case going with Kirt ending up winning it. He thought of pouring it so that Kirt would have all the blame since it was caused in his own restaurant.



With Mondo Burger shut down, Good Burger saved, and Ed being the hero, Ed ends the movie with his infamous catchphrase, "Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger. Can I take your order?"



Overall, despite the huge amount of popularity from All That and Kenan & Kel, the ratings for Good Burger were negative. Lisa Alspector from Chicago Reader said "The received notion that kids want their movies fast and furious is barely in evidence in this 1997 comedy, a laboriously slow suburban adventure in which a teenager's summer of leisure slips through his fingers when he has to get a job—an experience that proves almost life threatening because of the cutthroat competition between two burger joints". The same could be said by the people who were fans. They did not like the movie at all. I don't either. It's stupid, it's corny, and it's not funny for anyone who sees it. The soundtrack, while popular at the time ranked No. 101 on the Billboard 200 and No. 65 on the Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums, is pretty much forgettable with the exception of "We're All Dudes" by Kel Mitchell and Less than Jake and "Knee Deep" by George Clinton. However, the movie did well financially making $23 million dollars.

I do not recommend watching this movie at all, even if you are an All That fan or a Kenan & Kel fan. If you can stay away from it, then do so.



That's all for now. Tune in next time as we jump into 1998 with CatDog.



Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon.

-Patricia

Old School Lane's Nickelodeon Tribute: Kenan & Kel

Laurel and Hardy. Statler and Waldorf. Martin and Lewis. Abbott and Costello. Penn and Teller. Siegfried and Roy. Batman and Robin. The infamous duo that you simply can't think of one without the other. Whenever you see one of them alone, it doesn't look or feel the same. In some way, they seem to coincide and work with each other beautifully with their different strengths. In the 90's, two members from All That were forming to be the next dynamic duo: they were Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell.

They have performed many skits together in All That from Good Burger to their duo performances as the old, grumpy man Mavis and Clavis. At the time, many people regarded them as the next “Abbott and Costello”. On July 14, 1996, Kenan & Kel, the first spin off of All That, debuted on TV.

The show was about Kenan and Kel playing two teenagers named Kenan Rockmore and Kel Kimble who always think of outrageous plans to make themselves rich or famous. However, due to many circumstances, they always mess things up and end up getting caught. The episodes always started and ended on stage as Kenan and Kel would talk to an audience and explain what the episode would be about. Kenan would always come up with some crazy idea that involved with gathering a few objects and asking Kel to meet him somewhere. Kel tries to call Kenan back and would always leave the stage saying his infamous catchphrase “Aww, here it goes!” Kenan works as a cashier in a grocery store called Rigby's under a supervisor named Chris Potter (played by Dan Friechman). Kel always enters into Rigby's and snags a bottle of orange soda. Kel loves orange soda more than anything in the world. Whenever he sees a bottle of orange soda, he would say the following catchphrase: “Who loves orange soda? Kel loves orange soda. Is it true? Mmm-hmm. I do, I do, I do, I do, I do-ooooh.”

We were also introduced to Kenan's family: Sheryl (played by Teal Marchande) is a kind, sweet, and patience mother. Roger (played by Ken Foree) is a tense, impatient, father. He's the only one in the family who hates Kel due to his sarcastic humor and making fun of his bald head. He gets angry whenever Kenan and Kel gets into their crazy scenarios. You might recognize Ken Foree in the 1978 zombie horror classic George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Kyra (played by Vanessa Baden) is Kenan's younger sister who always had a huge crush on Kel. You might recognize Vanessa in the Nick. Jr kid's show Gullah Gullah Island.

The show was created by Kim Bass, who was also the co-creator of Sister Sister. She had the idea of creating a show similar to The Honeymooners in which Ralph Kramden would try to reach for the moon and try to be rich while partnering with his dimwitted best friend Ed Norton. An interesting thing to note about Kenan & Kel was that it was the first teen series in which it launched well-known actors among the network. All the previous shows that Nickelodeon aired had a different premise with actors and actresses we've never seen before. But with Kenan & Kel, we were already well established with Kenan and Kel from All That and Vanessa with Gullah Gullah Island. Also it was the first teen series since My Brother and Me that starred a mostly black cast.

''One of the breakthrough elements is the uniqueness of making a show that is based on the talent rather than the other way around. This idea came out of the fact that these two had such great chemistry together”, said Cyma Zargahami, general manager/senior vice president of programming at Nickelodeon in a 1996 article from Orlando Sentinel.

They truly thought that Kenan and Kel were going to be the next Abbott and Costello. So much so that the intro to the show sung by Coolio compared them to other famous duos like Abbott and Costello, Penn and Teller, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Siegfried and Roy. At the time, they were. Kenan was the straight man of the duo similar to Hardy, Abbott, and Kramden while Kel was the funny, goofy character of the duo similar to Laurel, Costello, and Norton. They knew that they could play on each other in a way that made them in sync.''When we get together, it's chaos, it's hilarious,'' said Kel Mitchell in the interview with Orlando Sentinel.

The show was hugely popular among many Nickelodeon fans calling it the best teen sitcom of all time. It had huge ratings praising them for their sense of humor, their ability to act in funny situations, and their timing of expression. Whenever a plan wouldn't work and Kenan would yell “Whyyyy?” or when Kel was expressing how much he loved orange soda, it always cracked a smile on people's faces. The episode that most people remember is when Kenan was eating a tuna fish sandwich and he chokes on a screw. He plans on suing the tuna fish packaging company for almost dying from eating their tuna. The company begs them not to sue them, even bribing them with a million dollars, but Kenan says no. On the day of the trial, Kenan asks Kel to the stand to explain what happened on that day. When Kel finally confesses that it was him who dropped the screw in the tuna, he reacts in such a hilarious way that still gets me laughing to this day. 

When Kenan and Kel starred in Good Burger (which I'll interview next week), Kenan and Kel fever was spreading among fans everywhere. They couldn't get enough of them. You couldn't talk about one character without the other. The first two seasons was filmed in Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, FL in front of a live studio audience while the remaining two seasons was filmed in Los Angeles to get more celebrity guest stars.

The show ended on July 15, 2000, four years exact on the same day it aired. Some of the actors went on to do different things while some faded into obscurity.

Ken Foree has been in other movies such as the remake of Dawn of the Dead, The Devil's Rejects, Rob Zombie's Halloween, Zone of the Dead, Water for Elephants, and The Lords of Salem.

Teal Merchande quit acting after Kenan & Kel ended.

Vanessa Baden went to Florida State University in 2004 and graduated with a degree in Sociology in 2007. She's returning to acting in an upcoming movie The Magic City.

Dan Frischman has appeared in other movies such as Masked and Anonymous, Lessons for an Assassin, Hard Four, and Tramps and Ramblers.

As for Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell, they went their separate ways after the series finale TV movie Two Heads are Better than None. The duo that people had people had regarded as the next Abbott and Costello were no longer together. Kenan had been in other movie and TV shows such as Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, hosting Oh Yeah! Cartoons, The Parkers, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Master of Disguise, Love Don't Cost a Thing, Fat Albert, Snakes on a Plane, Psych, The Magic of Belle Isle, and currently hosting The 90's Are All That. He's currently married to a woman named Christina Evangeline.

Kel had been in other movies, TV shows, and voice acted in shows like The Parkers, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, Mystery Men, Clifford the Big Red Dog, City Guys, The Proud Family, Half & Half, One and One, Honeydripper, Dance Fu, Battle of Los Angeles, Motorcity, and Wild Grinders. He's currently married to a woman named Asia Lee and has two children from a previous marriage.

In 2003, both Kenan and Kel auditioned to be in the new season of Saturday Night Live. Only Kenan was accepted in the bunch as being the first cast member to be younger than the show itself at 29. Who would have thought that out of the infamous duo Kenan would be the superior one. I always thought that Kel should have been the top dog. He was the funny guy who came up with the jokes, catchphrases, and slapstick humor. Overall, does this modern take of 50's classic duo sitcoms still work? Well, yes it does. Watching Kenan & Kel is always a blast! Seeing these two comedic actors work well with each other is so fun. Sure, the show can be a little redundant and monotonous with the same plot of trying to make it big ending up getting in trouble. Not to mention the same catchphrases and the same fourth wall jokes. Also, the acting can get a little hokey and over-the-top, some of the characters are not memorable and pointless, and the sets can look a little cheap. Besides these minor gripes and nitpicks, this show is an undeniable Nickelodeon classic that you should really check out if you've never seen it. I highly recommend it.

That's all for now. Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon. Thanks for reading.

-Patricia