Holy cow it's been 25 years since Good Burger was released! In related news, holy cow it's been 25 years since Good Burger was released! A film that appears to be based on little more than one single television sketch on the Nickelodeon show All That had enough momentum behind it to be a fully formed feature film. And it did fine as far as Nickelodeon films of the time went, but apparently there's been a cult following of the film? Like, are people thinking there's some stoner underpinnings to it? Because it's not inherently silly that I could tell. I say this as someone fully out of the demographic when the film came out, and am even further from it since then.

Brian Robbins of Head of the Class lore directed the film that stars Ed (Kel Mitchell, Mystery Men), a pretty clueless kid working at a burger place called Good Burger. He is almost run into, quite literally, by Dexter (Kenan Thompson, Snakes on a Plane). Dexter crashes into the car of his high school teacher (Sinbad, Jingle All the Way) and has to work the repair costs off with Ed at Good Burger, to his dismay. So what starts as a chore for Dexter turns into a friendship with Ed, as they try and stop Good Burger from closing at the hands of Mondo Burger, a joint across the street in the heartless corporate Starbucks type mold.

I enjoy trying the bad movie theorem like anyone else, but I think Good Burger is a weird outlier. It enjoys the simplicity of its characters and premise a little TOO much? For Kel, Ed's not as much high as he is playing a little too comically dim, and it doesn't land as much as it should. Kenan's Dexter carries the story along since Ed is the laughs, but given the story is extremely easy to follow, there's not a lot for him to do.

And because the film is moved along by kids, the supporting cast is peppered with familiar faces; Abe Vigoda plays one of the really old employees of Good Burger, Linda Cardellini plays a mental asylum patient who looks like the girl from The Ring, and Sinbad as the teacher is fine, but there was a jarring moment early on that I couldn't completely recover from, and that's whomever decided to costume him. The shirts he wears in the movie are not just big, they could be their own country. I'm aware the 90s gave us all some curious fashion choices, but Sinbad is six and a half feet tall, putting a huge shirt on a guy like that will kill a small child, and I don't care who knows it. He and Thompson actually do their scenes together pretty well and if there was something I enjoyed about the film, that would be it.

At the end of the day, Good Burger is pretty much what I thought it would be. It's forgettable, goofy fun, but except for the fun part. It's nice that someone decided that one single, solitary sketch was worth the time and effort for a film like this, but Friday or One Crazy Summer it ain't, by any stretch.

Having never seen Good Burger before (and to this point, if you couldn't tell that, well done good reader!), I don't have anything to go off of, but Paramount appears to do right by the film. Skin tones are accurate and not oversaturated, and image detail is slightly more than what I would expect from a quarter-century old film. Fabrics and hair is discernible more than anticipated, and light and color is reproduced faithfully as well.

DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless for Good Burger, which I can understand given that it's got a little bit of music underneath it. But louder more dynamic moments sound clear but don't get an immersive experience that you would expect. Channel panning is present and effective, though directional effects are lacking. Dialogue is maintained and well-balanced and is a solid listening experience.

The previous Paramount release is turned into a steelbook, and the extra that's brought over from that, the "All That" sketch which inspired it, is included here (4:44). It's better than the 2003 release barely, but it's something I guess?

If you're that guy who really enjoyed Good Burger and thought Kenan and Kel were the next (fill in whatever comic duo) but spoke to your generation or demo or whatnot, a steelbook of this film, with a digital copy and capable blu-ray presentation is about what you could expect for and Paramount gives it to you. As a Blu-ray it was okay, as a movie, less so.