The Slammin' Salmon - Movie Review

The Broken Lizard crew is back with Slammin’ Salmon, an homage to their days when they were working as waiters in college before filmmaking became their primary gigs.


Slammin’ Salmon is the restaurant where they all work. It is owned by retired boxing heavyweight champion Cleon Salmon who lives an extravagant lifestyle. It turns out that he owes the Yakuza twenty-thousand dollars after losing a bet on Japanese Albino hunting, so he’s bullying the weak-willed restaurant manager Rich Parente (Kevin Hefferman) into pushing the wait staff to bring in the money by the end of the night or Rich is going to feel the wrath of the champ’s fists.

For a lot of people, Broken Lizard may never be able to top Super Troopers but I’ve found that the more times I watch a Broken Lizard film the funnier it gets. I have the same viewing relationship with Ben Stiller’s directorial efforts like Zoolander and most of Amy Heckerling’s movies.

The first time I watched Slammin’ Salmon, I didn’t get a whole lot of thrills out of it, the jokes weren't clicking with me; but after giving it a second chance, I enjoyed it much more, and even more the third time. A big laugh-getter is Michael Clarke Duncan as Cleon. His grammar is hilariously flawed, he’s oblivious to common decency, and treats everyone like crap. He’s a wickedly funny character.

Another surprise is one of my favorite actors, Lance Henriksen, provides a cameo playing Dick Lobo; a television show creator and producer who hired one of the waiters, Connor (Steve Lemme), to be the lead role in his latest detective series because of his larger than life nose, but Connor was killed off after two episodes after receiving a nose job to reduce the size of it. I have always wanted to see Lance Henriksen verbally shred someone and my dream came true in this movie.

The rest of the staff stars Jay Chandrasekhar as the schizophrenic Nuts. If he forgets to take his med, he transforms into the insane Zongo. Eric Stolhanske plays Guy, an obnoxious playboy. Paul Soter plays dysfunctional twin brothers – the psychotic Dave and the humble Donnie. I wasn’t too keen on these guys doing two movies in a row where there are twin brothers, but it worked out just fine in both Beerfest and in Slammin’ Salmon.

The guys are accompanied by two waitresses – Mia, a ballerina in training, played by April Bowlby and the g-g-gorgeous Cobie Smulders who plays Tara the med student.

This is the first Broken Lizard film not directed by Jay Chandrasekhar; instead Kevin Heffernan took the reigns and did a fine job.

It took some time but Slammin’ Salmon became a ribald treat that I haven’t grown tired of. Michael Clarke Duncan stole the show for me, Lance Henriksen pulled off a great cameo, and the Broken Lizard gang kept bringing the funny.