BEFORE: I didn't get to this one in my Labor Day chain last year - so instead I'll go from camp staff to wait staff. Since two films this week featured members of the comedy troupe "The State", it makes sense to move sideways over to a film from another comedy troupe - Broken Lizard, the brains behind "Super Troopers" and "Beerfest". Also sending birthday SHOUT-out #32 to Jay Chandrasekhar, last seen in "I Love You, Man". And we link from Justin Long to Carla Gallo, who appears as a restaurant guest here, since they were both in "Funny People".
THE PLOT: The owner of a Miami restaurant indebted to the mob institutes a contest to see which waiter can earn the most money in one night.
AFTER: I should also point out that the comedy troupe responsible for those great hits also made "Club Dread", which was a comic mis-fire. Not for lack of trying, but this one seems more miss than hit. I admit I didn't watch it under the best conditions - I had to break my ban on watching films on stations with commercials, but it's not my fault that this film played on Comedy Central before the premium channels (actually, that should have been a tip-off). Which also meant that the salty language got bleeped out, leaving a LOT of blank holes in the dialogue track. I bet this would have been funnier with the cursing intact, but I guess I'll never know.
There are some interesting moments behind the scenes at an upscale Miami restaurant - we learn why never to order the blackened seafood, why you should never send food back (duh...), and why you should never give an engagement ring to a waiter to surprise your girlfriend. Slipping that ring into the dessert - how could that possibly go wrong?
The rest of the comic situations seem pretty manufactured - a waitress who keeps getting burned, a crazy waiter who's off his medications, a busboy who keeps getting drunk, and a waiter who got kicked off of a TV crime show and is forced to return to his old job. All of this takes place in a restaurant owned by a former boxing champion (whose last name happens to be "Salmon") who keeps coming up with creative anatomy-based threats, and forces a competition among the wait staff to up-sell the most expensive seafood, in order to pay off his gambling debts. Yeah, it's pretty contrived.
It might have been funnier to start with a believable premise and build to a comic crescendo - but this film starts at ridiculous, and then there's nowhere to go but down. It does so in an outrageous fashion, but any semblance of reality is sacrificed.
Plenty of NITPICK POINTS as well tonight - such as the fact that a restaurant hostess would NEVER seat a person dining alone in a booth. (I've dined alone often enough to confirm this...) Similarly, a busy restaurant would NEVER let a customer sit for hours without ordering on a busy night. And a celebrity whose meal got "comped" would probably leave a tip anyway - plenty of waiters call out poorly-tipping celebrities these days via internet gossip columns.
Also starring Kevin Heffernan (last seen in "Sky High"), Paul Soter, Steve Lemme, Erik Stolhanske, Michael Clarke Duncan (last seen in "A Night at the Roxbury"), with cameos from Will Forte (last seen in "The Brothers Solomon"), Olivia Munn (last seen in "Date Night"), Jim Gaffigan, Vivica A. Fox, Morgan Fairchild, Lance Henriksen (last seen in "Jagged Edge").
RATING: 4 out of 10 Japanese albinos
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