It's Just Movies

— by CAM SMITH —

The cult of diehard fans surrounding the Broken Lizard comedy troupe is a phenomenon that I don’t quite grasp.

Many of my (stoner) friends often attempt to regale me with clumsy re-enactments of key scenes from “Super Troopers” — a movie on heavy rotation in their collective homes — or try to formulate convincing arguments as to why “Club Dread” is, in fact, one of the greatest comedies of all time. Uh huh, I ain’t biting.

Perhaps, my almost Zen-like straight-edge daily existence (Hugs, not drugs, kids!) prevents me from understanding and appreciating the finer details and subtle layers of the Lizard oeuvre. Or maybe I just badly need to change social circles.

Watching the trailer for the crew’s latest, “The Slammin’ Salmon,” I still feel left in the dark. But maybe you won’t.

Featuring the always-entertaining Michael Clarke Duncan as a seriously intimidating restaurant manager, the film comes across as a slightly tamer retread of 2005’s “Waiting…” with a less interesting cast. Though, I am glad to see the very funny April Bowlby — a regular on TV’s “Two and a Half Men” — getting higher profile work, and Lance Henriksen’s presence is always a cause for celebration.

Check out the coming attraction for yourself and please shoot back some of your own reactions and feedback. What’s your relationship to Broken Lizard? Is there a certain film I would be best served revisiting? Is the red “Wedding Crashers”-esque comedy font used in this trailer becoming a really tiresome cliché?

Maybe you can succeed where my many well-meaning pals miserably failed.

Directed by Kevin Heffernan, and starring the aforementioned Duncan, Henriksen and Bowlby, as well as Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske, Cobie Smulders, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Olivia Munn, Vivica A. Fox and Morgan Fairchild, “The Slammin’ Salmon” is penciled in for a Dec. 11 release date at a theatre near you.

Click here to see two clips from the movie.

Follow Cam Smith on Twitter at http://twitter.com/camspcepisodes.