To be honest, I had been procrastinating when it came to watching Good Burger 2. Ever since Bill & Ted Face the Music, I’ve been hesitant to watch these distant sequels that Hollywood keeps churning out. I was hopeful about Face the Music since it had the same actors and writers/creators, but was sorely disappointed as I failed to generate any sort of emotional or nostalgic response reverberating from the originals (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is my favorite movie of all time).

However, as Keanu Reeves failed to make his face move in the Bill & Ted sequel, Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell have proven they hardly missed a beat since 1997’s Good Burger. With three years of chemistry under their belts by the time the first Good Burger debuted, the dynamic Nickelodeon duo got their own spin-off sitcom and feature film simply because they worked so perfectly together. And while they were somewhat estranged from one another for the better part of two decades, Kenan and Kel seemed to pick up right where they left off in Good Burger 2.

We pick up the story in the present day as Dexter (Kenan) fails to win over investors with his latest invention. Now with no house since it burned down during a test gone awry, he has to reach out to his closest and possibly only friend Ed (Kel), who he hasn’t spoken to in about 5 years.

Of course, Ed is very much the same as he was back in 1997. Except now, the lovable boneheaded idiot has a wife and plenty of kids with the same hairstyle as him, and he’s the sole owner of Good Burger. In desperate need of money for his next venture, Dexter tries to convince Ed to sell Good Burger to the corporate mogul Cecil McNevin (Lil Rel Howery). But we learn quickly that Cecil has his own agenda and now Dexter, Ed, and the other Good Burger employees must try desperately to save the restaurant they love.

Kevin Kopelow and Heath Seifert return as screenwriters, and it shows. Both men served as producers and writers on both All That and Kenan & Kel back in the ‘90s, and it’s nice to see their sensibilities haven’t changed much in 30 years. Tonally, Good Burger 2 feels almost identical to the original, with goofball logic guiding most of the plot.

Most impressively, Kopelow and Seifert treat their two main characters the same way. In the first movie, Dexter is a flawed protagonist who takes advantage of Ed’s stupidity and kindheartedness. He does more of that here, and in a way that makes him feel even more sympathetic. Being a mainstay in sketch comedy for the past three decades, Thompson hasn’t skipped a beat comedically. His timing is still spot on and he appears to be having more fun than we’ve seen him have in years. He could have easily phoned in this project and treated it as the silly farce that it is, but the actor approaches the role with as much sincerity as he did in 1997. Mitchell’s character might not be as nuanced but he also seems to just as inspired in his Pee-wee Herman-meets-Bill-and-Ted role.

A lot of these legacy sequels try to go bigger and better than their progenitors but Good Burger 2 simply borrows much of the original’s formula but modifies certain ingredients enough that they make sense in a new context. The universe gets expanded a bit, but only in ways that make sense considering how much time has passed.

Impressively enough, most of the jokes and running gags feel like they would have fit well in the 1997 film as well, especially the understated joke-within-the-joke stuff. At one point, Ed is prepping Dexter for his job interview with Good Burger’s manager. During the hypothetical situation, Ed, pretending to be Mr. Jensen, gives a scenario where he answers a phone and has to deal with his wife going into labor. A moment later, Mr. Jensen (Fabrizio Guido) walks in and it’s a 17-year-old kid.

Also like the original, we get a healthy dose of episodic, sketch-like scenes amidst the main story, including welcomed cameos from Lori Beth Denberg, Josh Server, and Danny Tamberelli, among others. Easter eggs and fan service are certainly focal points of the film but they never dominate the task at hand. For the most part, Good Burger 2 is able to compartmentalize the fan service, relegating them to small interstitials; the film never becomes too proud of itself or ingratiating for thinking of fun ways to implement nostalgia.

Just as you’d expect, Good Burger 2 doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s about as perfect of a 26-year follow-up as fans could have hoped for. Judging this against other contemporary comedies is a futile effort. Fans of the ’97 film will be the first to tell you that it, too, is no masterpiece. But for those with a specific sense of humor, Good Burger is their Some Like It Hot — heck, it’s Citizen Kane. And just like the original, the sequel is aware of what it is: a TV movie that snuck onto movie screens around the world. And at times, that feels like the best joke of them all.

Twizard Rating: 84