Midweek Mention... The Slammin' Salmon

The Slammin’ Salmon

Sidey: But this week's midweek mentioned is listener.

suggested?

Reegs: Yes.

Dan: Who did this?

Reegs: This was somebody from my work Loic. Yeah. So thank you for the suggestion

Sidey: courage.

Reegs: He suggested one of the broken lizard movies and broken lizard is an American comedy troupe. That comprises of a bunch of guys I've never really heard of, but I had seen super troopers, which was their movie about state troopers who were kind of It's it's

sort of

comedy.

Yeah. Comedy sketch thing. They were formed in the late eighties slash early nineties. They performed a number of live sketches and short videos. I did remember super troopers to be funny half decent performances and a very funny script. We were asked if we would watch slamming salmon, which I personally had never heard of.

Sidey: Nope. never heard of it till it

was thrust upon us

Dan: Well off my radar. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Everybody's seen it this week just to

Dan: just

Reegs: Yeah.

Okay.

Dan: watch it.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs:  the movie is about. Restaurant owner clear on salmon who is played by Michael Clark Duncan. He owns a sports themed restaurant called the slammin salmon. And then he's got a bunch of people that work for him, a manager, rich this sort of crazy guy called nuts.

These twins, one who works in the kitchen, one who works as a. Busboy, I think is the expression. Corey smolders, who you will remember from Coby. Yes. COBie Smulders from how I met your

Sidey: Yeah She's from that. And also she plays a character in the MCU

Reegs: somebody hill, Maria Hill, I

Dan: they all kind of comedians. Aren't they?

Sidey: Quite a few

of the people in this I had seen in other things, but there were a few that I just.

Hyper dead, but also I'd never seen them before. ever.

Pete: other than Michael Clark Duncan. I'd never seen any of these people before

Sidey: even the cameos

Pete: oh. And the guy, the guy from alien.

Sidey: Shitting

Reegs: So Lance

Sidey: legacy.

Reegs: So the basic premise of the movie is that. Cleon salmon thinks he owes $20,000 to the Yakuza. He lost money hunting, albinos so otherwise the restaurant is going to be taken. So it's, it sets up this kind of situation where all of the staff are competing to sell Sell out the food at the restaurant.

And if they come first, if they sell the most, then they get $10,000. They need to make $20,000. Like none of the math adds up straight away and that's fine. They don't care about that, but that's their basic setup for the movie.

Dan: Yeah. And they're all kind of crazy laughing off each other kind of friends, gang aren't they they're, they've got this kind of vibe going on where they're tight knit kind of

Sidey: Two of them kind of, it was sort of

dating.

Dan: Yeah, that's right. And they're yeah, they're, they're I mean, basically all up comics on they they're, they're putting into this and ad libbing maybe sometimes, or just going off

Sidey: um On what, what comment, what fucking possible thing whatever host these fucking talentless cans? They're the least funny, people I've ever seen in my

Reegs: So

Dan: picking up some vibes that you didn't enjoy this quite

Sidey: Well, I, I, I sent a message to

Reegs: society. In the podcast group, where we chat about what movies we're going to watch you per, I don't know if I can watch it all. It's so fucking terrible. And then you followed that up with hard to describe just how fucking pooling it is.

If I ever see that French cunt, I'm going to stab him, I don't believe you've met Lowy Covey,

Sidey: I did. I met him at your mom's 70th.

Reegs: Alright. And that was my 40th as well.

Sidey: Yeah, Your mom's more fun.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah, no, that's yeah. Okay. So you, weren't a fan

Sidey: it's fucking awful. Like Just so

fucking dreadful.

Dan: admit when I watched this, I was 15 minutes in and I was just thinking, I've got a fun pair of shit to do with my

then, then what states.

This was really fucking, you know, nothing was hitting home with me. I just thought this is, this is the kind of shit that I would just never, ever fucking watch, but I stuck with it and yeah. Occasionally through as, as we went on, there was a couple of lines and laughs for me what it was for me,

Sidey: You must've gone insane.

Dan: and laughs maybe, maybe that was it.

Maybe I was just being delirious at this stage. I was still watching this stuff, but it was, it started to get a few lofts and. A few of the comics and their jokes and their reactions to each other, I thought were generally funny. I thought this was starting slowly about the half way. Probably a little bit beyond.

I was starting to win me over a little

Pete: See, I, I was the other way around. I sort of chuckled a few times in the first 10 minutes before it like dawned on me, actually, it was mostly awful. And then, yeah, and then like the, like the. It's the painfulness of, I actually started thinking about how these actors fell.

I mean, I imagine now I know that they're all a fucking, like a troop and they do this all the time. They're actually pretty pleased with this. They must be pleased with themselves and each other,

Dan: I had, this was the best thing they've ever

Pete: specifically Michael Clark Duncan. And I'm thinking like, pretty much the only thing, other thing I've ever seen him in is like the green mile and, and that that's like a, an epic film.

And thinking how fucking embarrassed he must have been, or maybe you didn't care.

Reegs: It's really funny

Pete: it. It was painful to watch. It was absolutely fucking, I

Sidey: because I didn't know really much about it. So I chucked just the slamming salmon into Twitter and then it came back with whatever people have tweeted out about it. And just about everything was positive about it.

And. It was a couple of posts on like the anniversary of his death saying, oh, you know, don't, let's not forget the slammer salmon What fucking amazing performance. Fuck off. Literally the worst thing I've ever seen, like by a hundred

billion miles, this is the worst thing I've ever

Pete: to ask you,

Sidey: I know I tend to talk with like exaggerations, but

categorically

for the record. Worst

thing I've ever

Pete: I was going to say, because you said that a few weeks ago with cloud Atlas and I was gonna say,

Sidey: that's

what,

Pete: what, what was worse?

Sidey: This fucking worse it's worse than anything I've ever seen.

It's

fucking terrible.

Pete: best bit about it for me is in you. You've opened the pods. Bye. Qualifying that this was a listener suggestion because where I thought this was going to go was the fact that it's my nominations this week. And I thought you guys were going to pin this bag of shit on me. So I'm glad we qualified that this had nothing to do with me.

Reegs: I I'm sort of more with Dan. I, the opening was tough, man. The first 15, 20 minutes,

Dan: and I was website. Then I was ready to fucking start hurting the TV and it had nothing to do with what, in fact, my, my computer soon broke off to this. It

Sidey: just

Dan: just crashed. I don't know whether it's anything to do with the beginning of this year.

Reegs: There's a lot of exposition setting up the restaurant and the basic premise, there's, there's a number of.

Sidey: Right that all hateable or completely hateful the staff,

Reegs: the number one problem with the number one problem is that. They are without a shadow of a doubt. The most charisma lists, bunch of people I think I've ever seen. I can't believe there is like, not a spark of anything between them.

And there are some genuinely really funny lines in this movie that are delivered so badly a lot of the time. And then Michael Clark Duncan gets a few of them as well. He says, there's a really good one about, you know, what 10 ground feels like in your pocket. It feels like a third cock, which, so there was a number of.

Good lines of that quality in here. And,

Pete: it was funny when you just said it, then

Dan: there was a cut. No, there was a, there was a few lines which didn't give a fuck and it made me

laugh And I

Reegs: calls a Greek guy meet drapes instead of MetroPCS or whatever his name is, is some funny stuff. But then there's some really pure old stuff. I mean, he. Through a sort of turn of events because the restaurant staff were all scavenging, the food that comes back, he ends up eating an engagement ring, and then there's like a subplot where he has to shit, the engagement ring out.

And they're telling Mahindra from heroes who he's the only other him and Michael Clark Duncan are the only people in this movie you can like act or look like they have any kind of

Dan: No, that's it. What I think the rest are all just standup comics doing?

No, I'm not. I'm not saying that they, they, they were funny in this movie,

Pete: stand up,

Dan: for me, they weren't, it wasn't, it weren't good acting performances.

There weren't good acting performances, but there was lines in this movie that made it.

Pete: laugh So specific, basically, that that fucking says I hate comedy, that you can see coming a fucking mile off. And that's why. I mean, I I'll, I'll save it for another time about there's there's a few films, I think might get mentioned a later podcast.

I hate things like where, right? So this engagement ring, right? They like, almost like showing it up close to the camera. It's like, This is so like, it costs like so much and it's got to

Reegs: an important night.

Pete: yeah. And he just know that something really fucking stupid. I didn't think it was going to be is just totally like pure island crass and bass.

As, as it, it ended up being, and it just went on and on and on. And I w at what point were they thinking like, oh, When's like the best time for us to do like the big fucking reveal and everything. Like with that just what's a fucking terrible like gimmick and that's running through the middle of the rest of this bullshit.

And it's, this is the absolute sort of here I've mentioned in the past. I don't get on with like American comedies, right? All the fucking cartoons and stuff, different story. I think loads and loads of them are really strong. But American car, I'll say it, there is not one fucking funny series of American comedy that I think I've ever watched

Reegs: yet out of

Pete: or like,

Reegs: fucking

Pete: all.

So

also

Reegs: just outrageous.

Pete: depth. There's no fucking dimensions to it. All stuff that just goes on and on. I've watched friends cause there's some Fitbits in it. There's no fuck ever. It's like, oh, Joey's gonna eat loads and stuff like, oh, What a wacky guy. Oh, he's out of control. Oh, he's going to

Reegs: you need to watch something like curb your enthusiasm or so

Pete: I absolutely don't. I've watched one episode. What's that bullshit that's on now, which is apparently it's funny because a guy wears a t-shirt over a long sleeve t-shirt and they will get paid a bazillion pounds.

Fucking, the, the site, they're all. Science-y nerdy people.

Reegs: The big bang theory. No, but that's very mainstream. No, that's fair. That's like eight o'clock on a Saturday night type. You can get, there are

Pete: Fuck me.

Reegs: no, no, there are. You're being really,

Dan: yeah, to be fair. There were some funny shit. You've clearly not seen it, but Kirby enthusiasm

Pete: never seen it

Sidey: my Macy's compared this film to. Arrested development. Oh, and now we're not together anymore.

Reegs: Arrested development is brilliant. Uh With the parts that weren't originally on Netflix.

Pete: I mean

Reegs: it's

Pete: I'm sure they're all better than this film. They have to be

Reegs: are. They are better than this.

Pete: There's loads of, I've seen some night's skits from like Saturday night live and stuff like that, which I do find funny, but most of it is like totally pure Royal in this there's no, it's almost like they've like cobbled something together in like 30 seconds.

Oh, it'd be funny if light. This happened, you know, and I don't mind fucking don't mind based off and crashed off and, you know, sledgehammer humor, like I love bottom, like, you know, but this it's it's, there are subtleties within it. There is some depth with it. It's it's fucking well-thought-out and brilliantly acted.

And the timing's amazing and stuff. This was just,

Sidey: loaded it. Had

that

appalling nineties aesthetic. about it as though it's fucking dreadful.

Dan: When

Reegs: so cheap. Didn't it? It looked

Sidey: this was released in 2009.

Yeah Wow. I've got some financials for you.

The budget don't know what the budget was not really a box office though. Let's just say that the budget was a million dollars for, for sake the box office numbers. What do you think this drew in

Dan: box office? Don't forget it got there.

Reegs: yeah. Did it have a cinema cinema release? It did a hundred thousand dollars.

Dan: I would say

Pete: please don't tell me it was it was a massive success.

Sidey: $60,430.

Dan: I've doubled what they

Sidey: fucking too much Cause this is

my son's funeral genuinely had more loss than this. It did when the shipping forecast came on That was funny when they guy nearly fell in the grave. that was funny This is not funny. It's fucking shit.

Pete: When, when, when I did a naked dinosaur impression, that was really funny.

Reegs: so they, some of them J Chandra Succar who had apologies for the mispronunciation,

Sidey: No, don't apologize. I wanted to kill

Reegs: Saker, he went on to become a TV director. He was the guy who played nuts slash Gonzo. The guy who went through a really weird. Sort of disassociative personality disorder thing that distant worked for me.

He worked on arrested development amongst other things Heffernan Kevin Heffernan was the guy. Yeah. He, he started in the lightweight early. He

Dan: looking at his side.

It's got a genuine look of disgust each and every night you're mentioned in here,

Reegs: he started, he was the sort of restaurant he was wanting.

He needed to shit. The diamond ring.

Dan: I totally get

Reegs: he started,

Dan: well. Sorry, because it's just that when you've seen a film that irritates you as badly as this, and you feel like I'm not getting that time back and you, you, you somehow kind of hold them accountable for even making this shit.

Sidey: I'm thinking about them watching like the first sort of cut of this gun. Yeah. We've really fucking nailed this.

I feel like this is embarrassing.

Yeah.

Reegs: I would bet a lot of people do like it. And there were for me a

Pete: no, they don't six 60,000 pounds. That's terrible.

Reegs: $6,000.

Pete: Oh, sorry. Yeah. I

Reegs: the car. I just hang on. I just wanted to finish that because half of them, he started in the lightweight early Noah T's superhero, caper sky high, the one featuring Kurt Russell.

And we've seen that. And Eric still Handschy who was the guy who played the double act guy. The bus boy and the kitchen staff guy, he went on to act in curb, your enthusiasm and six feet under amongst other things. So they, they clearly did have potential and went on to work on some really good stuff.

I suspect they were trying to make us sort of office space, but for the kitchen. Porter waiter type, which is actually a really good idea. If somebody could execute it really well, but basically it was a li it was strangely energy lists and  and charisma lists, and sometimes degenerate it into kind of family guy style, nonsensical, stringing of words together.

But there were some genuine laughs I think Michael Clark Duncan is quite funny in this. There, there are some good laughs. These guys have just been assholes. I think

Dan: Yeah. I, I would go along with the fact that this was artist shit for like most of it. Most of it, but I had a, there was a few lines in there and maybe it's because I'm just kind of laughing at myself, looking at this and watching it for so long, but I laughed and no, I'm not ashamed to say there was a few lines in there and they were quotes.

I didn't bother in town because it didn't feel like this deserves that amount of attention. But I did remember laughing and thinking, well, at least we've got that. Then at least there was a couple of lines there that, that made me. Kind of smile and laugh at a time, but overall, you know, if you're going to give this out of 10 or something, you know, I would be hard pressed to go above a five for it, to be

Pete: I think that would be incredibly

Sidey: Yeah.

Yeah

Reegs: I would say five is, is good about where I'm at.

Pete: I

Reegs: I don't think we've ever really done a numbers score, but this is, this is proved so incendiary.

So if you have got a movie you want us to like,

Dan: Yeah. If you think a movie's good, send it to the bad dads where we tell you

Reegs: And two or three of us will like absolutely pile in and tell you what account you are and threatened to stab you.

Pete: had to apologize to my messes because of

Dan: you made her watch it.

Pete: I said to her, it's a comedy. I knew nothing about it. I said like, where do you watch?

I even gave her the choice. I said, you can watch like the main feature or the comedy ones, not ones that, you know, and she was like, oh, stick the comedy on. And then about like 10, 15 minutes in, I just looked at her and I was just like, I'm so sorry. You don't, you don't have to watch this with me.

Dan: say,

Pete: the nicest I've been to her.

Reegs: she

Dan: she would rather suck your cock than watch this?

Pete: Yeah, I might've got to Targhee yeah.

Sidey: yeah, The Mrs. walked out of this after about 10 minutes to do something. Everything else

is fucking dreadful. I don't really have. The vocabulary to really

articulate exactly

how

catastrophic the

Pete: I'm there with the,

Sidey: but I would like y'all to watch it, just to see how fucking terrible things can get.

Pete: I did, I did also wonder that cause like the ballet girl who got her face burnt loads and loads of times there was yeah, I kind of thought is that Margot Robbie, like at the beginning and it wasn't,

She was like a bit of a shit Margot, Robbie. Probably about the best thing in, in it for me.

Sidey: Check it out though,