obj/subj: good burger (1997).

letterboxd:

★ ★ ★ - (3.1/5)

imdb:

★ ★ ★ - (5.8/10)

rotten tomatoes:

★ ★ - (33/100)

Good Burger is a movie spinoff of a reoccurring sketch on a Nickelodeon show in the late nineties, and it shows. Much about it can come off as remarkably dated, unfunny, or only remarkable to those that had prior knowledge of the skit. It's because of this cheesiness (pun very much intended) that it earned its cult classic status, often leaving viewers confused as to how they feel about it. While audience reviews tend to linger around zero, three, or five stars, Good Burger bounces around the spectrum radically. It's divisive from person to person in a specific way that not many movies are.

the difference between "so bad it's good" and "it's bad but i like it".

The phrase "so bad it's good" is used to describe movies so terrible that they reach a whole other level of entertainment, unique in how disastrous they are. Watching them allows you to laugh at how wondrously wacky they are and think about how these ideas were conceived in the first place. It's a lovely experience to share with others, and much preferable to a boring bad movie. Bad films that don't have the courage to go off the rails with how bad they are just find themselves being a waste of time that leave the viewer with no emotional resonance, no meaningful takeaway, and a bad mood. It's because of this that people would take The Room over a soulless cash grab any day.

"So bad it's good" is usually the only kind of bad movie that's acceptable to like. It has to fall between those lines and be the perfect amount of ridiculous. At first, Good Burger seems to fit the description. It's nonsensical, and just gets more and more so as it goes on. Minigolf maiming, mental hospital flash mob, and big capitalism burgers- haters and fans alike can agree that there's nothing quite like it. They can also agree that it's not very good. However, that's where the similarities between the two end. People who dislike it will argue that it's bad, and people who like it will argue that it's so bad it's good, unaware that there is indeed a third option that might fit better.

Sometimes a movie is just bad, like Good Burger. It's not quite insane enough to reach so-bad-it's-good status, but it's not developed enough to qualify as a quality piece of cinema. Despite this, it manages to be a fun kind of bad. A kind of bad that leaves you not feeling like you've wasted your time, and you're glad that it's there. A Saltine of a movie in that you don't partake in it all the time besides when you need it, which may be fairly rarely. It's bad, but still a nice watch. It's bad, but you can still love it.

personal thoughts

For so many years of my life, I lived by the rule that if my feelings on a movie didn't align with Rotten Tomatoes, then I was wrong, and I wasn't allowed to like/dislike that movie anymore. At some point, I came across a ranking video on Youtube that mentioned that the #1 on his list wasn't what he'd call the best one on there, but it was his favorite. That shook my whole worldview, as I looked back on all the movies that I would toss to the side or try to like based on what other people thought about them. You can have a favorite that's not everyone else's, and that's okay.

Good Burger is the first bad movie that I saw after I realized that critical opinion isn't fact, and I was utterly fascinated by it. It hardly took any time at all for me to fall in love. Despite all the poorly aged parts, it was so wonderfully dumb and willing to flaunt it that it lured me in. I checked the reviews when it was over, and saw how scattered they are, but for once I didn't even care. I just had a fun, nice time watching a bad movie. That's something that you can do, and it's beautiful.