Publication Date: 08-13-2026

The Slammin’ Salmon (2009) review

Dir. Kevin Heffernan

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

This review was originally written in 2018, but unpublished until now.

The Slammin’ Salmon takes place at the titular restaurant, owned by former heavyweight boxing champion “Slammin'” Cleon Salmon (Michael Clarke Duncan). His incompetence as an owner doesn’t negate the fact that he’s an owner that demands excellence from his staff — which also isn’t negated by the fact that he uses fear tactics and blunt force to extract that exact result from them. One night, Cleon informs Rich (Kevin Heffernan), a chump server who worked his way to become the restaurant’s manager, that he is close to going bankrupt and needs a record-breaking night in order to stay open. He tasks Rich with getting his eclectic band of servers to make $20,000 in order to keep their jobs.

Perhaps this wouldn’t be such an orthodox order if the Slammin’ Salmon’s staff wasn’t as incompetent as it was. Time for the waiter roll-call: there’s Nuts (Jay Chandrasekhar), a nebbish soul who turns into “Zongo,” the complete opposite of himself, when he’s off his medication, Connor (Steve Lemme), a former actor whose nose-reduction surgery cost him the role of a lifetime, Dave (Paul Soter), a demanding cook, Donnie (also played by Soter), his incompetent twin brother, Tara (Cobie Smulders in a memorable performance), who is using this job to put her through med-school, Mia (April Bowlby), who exploits male submissiveness for large tips, and Guy (Erik Stolhanske), a micromanager with a short fuse.

The film follows this goofy bunch as they haggle, exploit, and demean themselves and their customers in order to become the server with the most in sales by the end of the night. He or she who comes out on top wins $10,000 whereas he or she who comes in last place wins a knockout from Cleon himself. This leads to Donnie slugging blue curacao after every screw-up per Connor’s orders. It also causes Mia to flirt with her tables in hopes sex-deprived blokes with low self-esteem give her a good tip after she tells them they want the four-pound lobster for dinner. In the meantime, Connor is given the tall order of slipping an engagement ring in a couple’s dessert, while Guy attends to a lone diner who only requests a water while reading War and Peace and Tara banks on Nutella (Vivica A. Fox), a famous musician, for a lofty tip that will put her ahead of her male counterparts.

With The Slammin’ Salmon, the Broken Lizard troupe have essentially placed themselves in the same comic realm as Waiting…, the Ryan Reynolds/Anna Faris-led comedy. The film is a satire on the restaurant world, a culture that many individuals know very well if they struggled to put themselves through college, but one they are so quick to critique in the present when their filet mignon comes out a few minutes later than they might’ve liked. In response, the five writers (director Heffernan, Chandrasekhar, Lemme, Soter, and Stolhanske) at hand make it their prerogative to touch on all the dining conventions, from a woman’s looks being the primary factor in the size of their tips to the irritating customers who sit at a high-demand table and simply request the cheapest items on the menu. The satirical angle of this premise isn’t lost on the Broken Lizard men, and if it were, their entire portfolio would’ve and should’ve been called into question. These are the men who wrote the hilarious Club Dread after all and were behind the cult classic Super Troopers in their earliest days.

What fails The Slammin’ Salmon is its reliance on predictable humor. Michael Clarke Duncan’s caricature of a hasbeen wrestler isn’t funny, and that’s evident from the moment we acknowledge that he’s written in a way where his physical traits and love for brutality are the punchline of every joke. The real humor in the story stems from the barrage of waiters attempting to claw their way to the top spot of the leaderboards by doing everything they can to sell lobster, salmon, and every other expensive fish on their menus. Broken Lizard has specialized in broad humor since their inception with Puddle Cruiser, but their funniest bits come from when they recognize why convention is what it is and do not blindly follow it. Club Dread parodying Jimmy Buffett and red herrings in slasher films is funny. The Slammin’ Salmon predicating its humor on Duncan’s intimidating physique isn’t funny.

The Broken Lizard boys do prove they can play well with others and others can play well with them. Colbie Smulders and April Bowlby hilariously acclimate to the wacky premise as well as the team’s multi-faceted love for spoofing without billing their work as flat-out parody. The Slammin’ Salmon‘s fluctuating humor is one thing, but it’s marginally spared long bouts of being unfunny and anemic thanks to the spirit of a cast hellbent (but not desperate) on getting laughs.

Starring: Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Jay Chandrasekhar, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske, April Bowlby, Colbie Smulders, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Forte, and Olivia Munn. Directed by: Kevin Heffernan.