I can’t say I was too impressed with the original Good Burger from 1997. Still, a sense of absurdity and child-like humor made the watch enjoyable, but nothing I ever needed to return to. Much to my surprise, while searching for new releases, I stumbled upon Paramount+ and their straight-to-streaming sequel, creatively titled Good Burger 2. Coming twenty-six years after the initial release, Good Burger 2 reunites Dex and Ed in another fast-food adventure following the unbearable trend of a suffocating nostalgic plot. 

What felt like an over-extended SNL skit, the film made every possible attempt to call back to the original movie and squeeze in as many celebrity cameos as possible. After Dex (Kenan Thompson) loses all his money and investors in a failed business plot and has a moment with an odd cameo from Mark Cuban, he calls his long-time friend, Ed, to get his old job back at Good Burger. Ed (Kel Mitchell), whose voice impressively stayed the same after twenty-six years, still adores and lives for the beloved fast-food restaurant. Now the owner (and a father?), Ed is responsible for ensuring Good Burger doesn’t sell to major corporations–unless his best friend Dex convinces him otherwise. 

I compared this film to an SNL skit not only because it included a slew of cast members and celebrities, including Pete Davidson, Andy Samberg, Maya Rudolph, Bowen Yang, and Al Roker (to name a few) but because the film doubled down on almost every joke made in the original. We see Ed with kids who are painfully similar to him, Roxanne (Carmen Electra) returns, customers and old crew members make appearances, and the villain is, of course, related to the original mastermind from Mondo Burger, Kurt Bozwell (Jan Schweiterman). 

The film isn’t objectively bad for a cheap family comedy–although I admit I was not a fan. What is the most bothersome is the fact that Hollywood seems to only be interested in capitalizing (or at least trying to) on past ideas. Nostalgia is the word in the industry because it is as though every film we now watch is like a Marvel movie–impossible to enjoy unless you’ve seen the predecessors. 

While I will admit comedy is subjective, and this review is coming from someone needing a more intellectually stimulating experience, Paramount truly disappointed me with this film. The plot was overly predictable, probably because it was too similar to the first film, and the character development meant nothing. Ed and Dex had already had an adventure and growth, but it is as though, in twenty-six years, nothing changed except their age. Their characters were static and almost annoying. The fun I found in the previous film came from the fact that they were teenagers, like us. As adults, the absurd comedic characteristics of the two protagonists aren’t the same. 

Except for my delight in seeing Yung Gravy in a kid’s movie, nostalgia couldn’t save me from feeling as though a charming 90s cult-like comedy was now nothing more than a cheap cash-grab sequel. It is sad to think that so many people found fun in this film, as we saw during the closing credits, but the film lacked–incoming pun–meat. While I don’t think revisiting films as sequels or paying homage to their parent films is wrong or not needed, I just wish writers and studios would produce something original with a light dusting of nostalgic callbacks, not an overstuffed cesspool. 

Review Courtesy of Sara Ciplickas

Feature Image Credit to Paramount+