Good Burger (1997)
★★★ — Good Burger (1997)
Good Burger arrived in cinemas in the summer of 1997 as part of a wave of films that Nickelodeon Pictures produced to translate its television hits into something bigger, or at least longer. The channel had already built a loyal Saturday-morning audience through sketch shows and sitcoms, and the Ed character, played by Kel Mitchell, had become one of its most recognisable faces thanks to the recurring "Good Burger" sketches on All That. Spinning a single recurring sketch into a 95-minute feature film is a gamble that rarely pays off cleanly, and the film sits comfortably alongside other mid-nineties family comedies of its era, polished but unremarkable, in the sense that it was professionally made without any particular ambition beyond putting its core audience in a good mood for an hour and a half. For a bit of context on what else the mid-nineties were throwing at cinemas, our Anaconda (1997) review covers another film from that same crowded year.
The film was directed by Brian Robbins, who came to the project already familiar with the Nickelodeon world, and was produced through the Tollin/Robbins production company alongside Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies. The premise is a fairly straightforward David versus Goliath setup: a small, cheerfully chaotic burger joint faces the threat of a slick corporate chain opening directly across the street. It is the sort of story you have seen done a dozen times in family comedies, though the film leans into the absurdity rather than the sentiment to make its case. The supporting cast gives the two leads a bit to bounce off: Sinbad appears as a sympathetic adult figure, while Abe Vigoda, a character actor with a career stretching back decades, turns up in a role that seems to exist mainly to delight anyone old enough to recognise him. Shar Jackson rounds out the main ensemble. The whole production has the slightly oversaturated, high-energy feel typical of Nickelodeon's output in the period, which is either a recommendation or a warning depending on your tolerance for that particular aesthetic.
At the centre of it all, of course, are Kel Mitchell and Kenan Thompson. The two had built their chemistry over years of sketch work together, and whatever the film's structural limitations, they are genuinely easy company on screen. Mitchell's Ed is the kind of character who only really works if the performer commits to the bit without a hint of self-awareness, and Mitchell does exactly that. Thompson, playing the rather more grounded Dexter, functions as the audience's point of entry: the straight man who is never quite as straight as he thinks he is. If you want a sense of how other family films from the same era hold up, our review of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) is worth a look, and for something a bit more recent in the family space, there is also our piece on Trolls (2016) to compare notes with.
Good Burger is the kind of movie that makes perfect sense as a All That sketch stretched to feature length, silly, absurd, and built on the same goofy chemistry that made Kenan & Kel TV gold. As a kid, I never really liked it because it felt so different from their show. It wasn’t just short sketches and punchlines, it had a plot, actual villains (a corporate fast-food chain trying to put Good Burger out of business), and way too much Ed, the fry cook with a heart of… well, mystery. It was weird, messy, and didn’t have the rapid-fire pace I expected. But watching it as an adult it’s actually ok. Not great, not a classic, but surprisingly funny in places. The humour is dumb in the best way: food puns and gross-out gags. There’s a sweetness to it too, the friendship between Dexter and Ed, the underdog stand against corporate greed, that gives it a little heart beneath the silliness. It drags in spots, the story’s paper-thin, and the jokes don’t land as often as they should. But when they do they hit hard in that nostalgic, early-’90s-kids-comedy sweet spot. Harmless, occasionally hilarious, and clearly made for 12-year-olds.
I think that is probably the most honest way to put it: this is a film that knows its audience and, most of the time, respects them enough to deliver what they came for, even if it never quite figures out how to sustain the energy across a full feature. There is something likeable about a film that has no pretensions beyond making a roomful of twelve-year-olds laugh, and in that narrow brief, Good Burger earns a passing grade. Just do not go in expecting the sketch timing you might remember from Saturday mornings. Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger. You will want to order accordingly.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1997 | Watched: 2025-09-22
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Good Burger (1997) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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