In a dusty border town where bad decisions come cheap and hope is even cheaper, two down-on-their-luck idiot friends convince themselves that landing jobs as busboys will magically solve all their problems.

Busboys Review

Few can argue that the last two decades have been among the worst for American cinema. Radical progressive activists have hijacked the already Left-leaning Hollywood and transformed it into a joyless soapbox from which they foist their ideologies on those who still haven’t purchased a WioW VIP MEMBERSHIP. Yet, as far as movies have sunk, no genre has suffered like comedy.

It takes two key ingredients to make a successful comedy: fearlessness, you can’t be worried that you’re going to hurt someone’s feelings, and at least a basic understanding of the human condition. This, more than anything, explains the rapid decline of the genre. Modern sensitivities don’t allow for anyone to be made to feel uncomfortable, and radical progressivism willfully rejects objective truth.

So, when it was announced that veteran yuckster and co-star of classic sidesplitters like Tommy Boy, David Spade, was partnering with Theo Von to resurrect irreverent R-rated comedies, fans were excited to see what they hoped would be a return to normalcy.

Unfortunately, the first sprig to sprout from the decades-long woke forest fire is more gnarled bramble than oak.

Busboys is surprisingly bad in all respects. The performances from the entire cast, not only the leads, are flat and tepid. David Spade, whose core schtick is comedic indifference, appears genuinely bored as he regurgitates the lifeless dialogue he co-wrote, while Theo Von spends most of the film looking wooden and lost.

What quickly becomes apparent is that this isn’t simply a case of two comedians misfiring. It is a film with no one at the helm capable of holding it together. And when you look at the background of director Jonah Feingold, it becomes clear why. His career has been built almost entirely on small, dialogue-driven romantic comedies like Dating & New York, At Midnight, and EXmas, projects that lean on charm and conversation rather than structure, pacing, or comedic escalation.

That experience does not translate here.

This kind of comedy requires control. It requires a director who understands rhythm, who can build a scene, escalate it, and land it. Instead, Busboys feels like it is being guided by someone out of his depth. Scenes drag well past their breaking point or end before they have a chance to land. Moments that feel like setup are abandoned, and others appear without any groundwork. It is not just disjointed. It is unmanaged.

To be fair, there is an A-plot. The two stumble into jobs as busboys, aiming to eventually become waiters at a supposedly “fancy” restaurant. On paper, that is a perfectly workable backbone for a comedy. The problem is that the film treats it as a joke without ever replacing it with anything substantial. The premise is intentionally ridiculous, which could work, but only if the characters grounded it in some kind of growth, ambition, or even a loose sense of progression.

They don’t.

Instead of developing, they just bumble from one situation to the next, unaffected by anything that happens to them. There is no sense that they are learning, no escalation of stakes, no payoff to the idea that they are working toward anything. The A-plot exists, but it carries no weight because the film refuses to take even its own absurdity seriously.

This lack of structure feeds directly into the film’s biggest failure, its characters, or rather, the absence of them. There is nothing to latch onto because no one is defined beyond the most surface-level traits. Compare that to Spade’s Richard in Tommy Boy. Richard was not just “the sarcastic guy.” He was a small, lonely man who used cutting humor as a shield, made all the more bitter by the loss of the one person he respected. His arc, begrudgingly connecting with Tommy as they realize they share the same goals, gave the comedy weight. You understood him.

There is none of that here.

Spade plays a bored version of himself, and Von plays a moron without any identifiable personality beneath the schtick. They do not evolve, they do not clash in any meaningful way, and they certainly do not grow. They just exist, drifting from one scene to the next like passengers in their own movie.

This is where a competent B-plot would have done some heavy lifting. A secondary story, something with even a hint of emotional grounding or personal stakes, could have balanced out the nonsense and given the audience something to invest in. Busboys seems to realize this far too late, tossing in what feels like a B-plot during the final stretch. But it does not function as one. It is less a parallel storyline and more a third-act non sequitur, a conflict that appears out of nowhere and demands investment the film has not earned.

The pacing does not help. It is sluggish to the point of feeling inert, largely because the film never establishes any real momentum. There is no narrative engine driving things forward, no escalation, no layering, no sense of movement. Side characters wander in and out without purpose, adding nothing and going nowhere. It is all set up with no punchline, and in a comedy, that is fatal.

By the time the credits roll, Busboys does not feel like a failed throwback to raunchy comedy. It feels like a rough draft that somehow made it to the screen. Whatever promise there was in pairing Spade and Von gets buried under weak writing, shapeless direction, and a complete lack of comedic timing. If this is meant to signal a return to form for the genre, I wouldn’t buy stock.

WOKE REPORT

Nothing

• They drop more “faggots” than a chain-smoking Englishman with Parkinson’s.
• They weren’t afraid to have genuinely attractive women peppered throughout the film.
• Diversity is present, but contextually relevant.