Good Burger (film)

Good Burger

Directed by

Brian Robbins

Written by

Dan Schneider
Kevin Kopelow
Heath Seifert

Produced by

Brian Robbins
Mike Tollin

Cinematography

Mac Ahlberg

Music by

Stewart Copeland

Distributed by

Paramount Pictures
Nickelodeon Movies

Release date

July 25, 1997

Running time

103 minutes

Film rating

PG

**External links**
IMDb

Good Burger is a 1997 American comedy film by Tollin/Robbins Productions and Nickelodeon Movies, released by Paramount Pictures, directed by Brian Robbins, and starring Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell. It was based on the comedy sketch "Good Burger" (starring Mitchell) featured on the Nickelodeon series All That.

Plot

On the first day of summer, dim witted and very funny Ed (Kel Mitchell) had a nightmare about talking burgers, and ends up being late for work at Good Burger. Meanwhile, a slacking high school student named Dexter (Kenan Thompson) steals his mother's car while she is on a business trip and accidentally crashes into and damages the car of his teacher Mr. Wheat (Sinbad). Dexter is in danger of going to jail as he does not have a driver's license or insurance. But Mr. Wheat agrees to let Dexter pay for the damages to both cars in exchange for not calling the police on Dexter. After determining that the damages will total $2,500, Dexter is forced to get a summer job. He winds up finding employment at Good Burger where he meets and reluctantly befriends Ed and a host of other colorful employees. At the time, neither one of them realize it was in fact Ed who inadvertently caused Dexter's car accident.

While it seems that Dexter is on his way to repaying the money he owes, things take a turn for the worse. Across the street from Good Burger, a large fancy burger joint called Mondo Burger is about to open up. Dexter originally found employment before Good Burger, but was fired for insulting Mondo Burger's manager Kurt Bozwell (Jan Schweiterman). It appears that the opening of the hugely popular Mondo Burger may very well spell the end for small time Good Burger because of the over-sized burgers they produce. Fortunately, Good Burger is saved by the invention of a secret sauce made by Ed. Dexter, having realized Ed was responsible for his car accident, takes advantage of the good-hearted yet dimwitted Ed in order to make money off of the secret sauce in order to pay off his debt sooner.

All seems well as Ed's sauce is a huge success. However, Mondo Burger's manager Kurt Bozwell, makes some failed attempts to obtain the sauce. Kurt first tries to persuade Ed to quit Good Burger to work at Mondo Burger with a higher hourly wage. When Ed turns him down, Kurt sends in Roxanne (Carmen Electra) to seduce Ed alone in order to find out the recipe for Ed's sauce, but to no avail as Ed injures her. Later, Ed and Dexter suspect something is up with Mondo Burger and disguise themselves as old women, to find out that Mondo Burger chemically induces their burgers (that they call "The Big Moody Burger") with "Triampathol", which is apparently an illegal food additive. Kurt kidnaps them and has them committed to Demented Hills mental hospital so they will not tell the public.

Threatened by the success of Ed's sauce, Kurt and his employees break into Good Burger after closing hours and poison Ed's secret sauce with shark poison. When Ed and Dexter's co-worker Otis (Abe Vigoda) tries to stop them, he is committed too. He tells the duo about Kurt's scheme, so they have to plan an escape. The next morning with the help of Ed doing a dance number and encouraging other patients to dance, the trio escapes the mental hospital via broken windows and they use an ice cream van to drive them back to Good Burger to prevent any customer from eating the poisoned sauce. Ed and Dexter then break into Mondo Burger to expose their chemically-induced burgers to the police. Dexter creates a diversion to which Ed tries to take a can of Triampathol, but accidentally knocks one into the meat grinder. With an idea, Ed then pours some more of the substance into the grinder. Just before Kurt can do away with Ed and Dexter, the Mondo Burger building starts to rumble in destruction due to the now ridiculously gigantic burgers that have been exploding (of Triampathol overdose). In the aftermath, Kurt is arrested for using the illegal substance and Mondo Burger is destroyed with the debris crushing and destroying Mr. Wheat's car as well (much to Dexter's amusement as he hands him the first half of the money he owes him for the car damages). Ed and Dexter then walk back to Good Burger where they both (especially Ed) are praised by the other Good Burger employees as heroes for saving Good Burger. The film ends with Ed saying "Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, can I take your order?"

Cast

Kel Mitchell as Ed, the cashier of Good Burger.
Kenan Thompson as Dexter Reed, a high school student who desires to slack during his summer vacation.
Jan Schweiterman as Kurt Bozwell is the C.E.O. and restaurant owner of Mondo Burger who will stop at nothing to make his food chain number one.
Sinbad as Mr. Wheat, a teacher who demands money from Dexter for car damages.
Abe Vigoda as Otis, an elderly Good Burger employee who cooks the French fries.
Shar Jackson as Monique, a female Good Burger employee who scolds Dexter for using Ed's gullibility to steal most of his money, but eventually becomes his girlfriend.
Dan Schneider as Mr. Bailey, the owner and manager of Good Burger.
Ron Lester as Spatch, the head fry cook of Good Burger.
Lori Beth Denberg as Connie Muldoon, a customer whose extremely complex orders are too difficult for Ed to memorize.
Josh Server as Fizz, the drive-thru employee of Good Burger.
Ginny Schreiber as Deedee, one of the 2 female employees at Good Burger and a vegetarian.
Linda Cardellini as Heather, an insane girl in Demented Hills for whom Ed grows feelings.
Shaquille O'Neal as Himself.
George Clinton as a Demented Hills Patient.
Robert Wuhl as an Angry Customer.
Carmen Electra as Roxanne, a henchwoman of Kurt who was assigned to seduce Ed into telling his secret sauce recipe.
Marques Houston as Jake.
J. August Richards as Griffen, one of Kurt's right hand men.
Hamilton Von Watts as Troy, Kurt's other right hand man
Wendy Worthington as the Demented Hills Nurse.
Colt Buehner as Dr. Doom.

Box Office

On a budget of $9 million, the film was a box office success, grossing over 23 million.

Critical reception

Despite the popularity of All That and the Kenan & Kel series, Good Burger received negative reviews from film critics, garnering a "Rotten" rating of 31% on Rotten Tomatoes.^[1] .

Home media

Paramount released the film on VHS on February 17, 1998, and on DVD on May 27, 2003.

Trivia

This is the first Nickelodeon film to be based on a TV series, Good Burger sketch from All That.
- Kenan (as Dexter)'s line: "She is All That!" is a nod to the series and theme song of All That
In its theatrical release, the Action League Now! episode, "Rock-a-Big-Baby", was shown prior to the screenings of the film. It was rated PG "for bizarre humor" by the MPAA.
This is Nickelodeon Movie's first film to contain cartoon sound effects.
- Most of the sound effects in this movie are from various Nicktoons.
In the HBO airings, the Nickelodeon Movies logo replaced with the Dreamworks Pictures logo.