Review: Have It Your Way: With ‘Good Burger 2’, You Get Exactly What You Ordered [SPOILERS]
With Good Burger 2, you get extra cheese. And it’s free! (with your Paramount+ subscription.)
Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell reprise their characters from the first Good Burger movie, made 26 years ago, and from sketches on the Nickelodeon show All That. In Good Burger 2, Dexter (Thompson) is a failed entrepreneur, while Ed (Mitchell) is still managing the (now very successful) restaurant where the two began their friendship.
As in the first movie, Dexter makes a mess of everything and the only one he can turn to is his old friend Ed, whom he hasn’t seen in a while. The ever-cheerful Ed invites Dexter to stay in his home, where he lives with his wife (Ego Nwodim) and his multiple children, all named after burger fixins. Dexter reunites niece Mia, played by Kamaia Fairburn, who is working for Ed.
Dexter is also back in uniform at Good Burger, where he tries to use his business acumen to improve the restaurant’s earnings. As with his venture in the cold open though, he makes spectacularly wrong choices, and Ed ends up selling the restaurant (and its franchises) to an unscrupulous businessman played by Lil Rey Howery.
Howery plays Cecil McNevin, whose partner Katt (Jillian Bell) has big plans for their new acquisition, namely making the restaurant entirely automated (customers will be served by a robot version of Ed.) Of course, it’s up to Ed, Dexter, Mia, and their crew (now played by Fabrizio Guido, Anabel Graetz and Emily and Elizabeth Hinkler) to get their burger joint back.
It’s a simple enough plot, and predictably it leads to some pretty silly antics, along with cameos from the first movie and from the duo’s Nickelodeon castmates as well as some of Thompson’s SNL buddies. But along the way, fans can enjoy the silliness of the caper as well as some callbacks to the first movie.
Just like a hamburger is not haute cuisine, Good Burger 2 is not an art house flick. But when you’re craving a burger, it’s the only food that will satisfy you — as long as it’s a good burger.