April 18, 2026
by Carla Hay
Directed by Jonah Feingold
Culture Representation: Taking place in Arizona, the comedy film “Busboys” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Asians, African Americans and Latin people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two restaurant busboy friends, who have a large age gap between them, decide their lives would be better if they were promoted to being waiters, but their career plans get derailed when they get mixed up in drug dealing and becoming confidential informants for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Culture Audience: “Busboys” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and horrible buddy comedies.
The only thing more dimwitted than the two loser protagonists in Busboys is this entire cinematic trash dump that’s trying to pass as a comedy film. The jokes are as limp and shabby as the awful mullet wig that David Spade wears in this dull movie. Everything in this sloppy and unfunny film looks like rejected ideas from the worst buddy comedies of the 1990s.
Directed by Jonah Feingold, “Busboys” was written by Spade and Theo Von. Spade and Von also co-star in the movie and are two of the movie’s producers. “Busboys” takes place in an unnamed city in Arizona near the Mexican border. The movie was filmed was the Los Angeles area.
“Busboys” begins by showing middle-aged Markie Montgomery (played by Spade) going to a veterinary clinic to pick up a mixed-breed male terrier named Pumpkin, a dog he does not own. Markie has been told that this dog has cancer and has only a few days to live before the dog presumably undergoes euthanasia.
Markie is also told that Pumpkin has recently lost his best friend. Markie is asked to give the dog a leisure ride in Markie’s car. Markie takes Pumpkin to an outdoor area. And the next thing you see is Markie mating with a female dog. This opening scene is completely pointless and didn’t need to be in the movie at all.
Meanwhile, in a high school classroom, teenager Steefen “Steef” Barn (played Gavin Warren) is being insulted by a mean-spirited teacher (played by Debra DiGiovanni), who tells a cruel joke in front of the entire class, in order to make Steef feel humiliated that Steef’s father is in prison for murder. Some of the students start throwing things at Steef, who walks out of the class and announces that he’s quitting school. As Steef steps out onto a street in front of the school building, he’s accidentally hit by a car.
The next scene shows Steef recovering in a hospital. His terrible mother Brenda (played by Libbie Higgins) seems eager for Steef to die so she can get insurance money from his death. Brenda is disappointed when she hears that Steef is expected to recover from this accident.
Steef has another visitor: the driver of the car that accidentally hit Steef. And that driver happens to be Markie. Steef doesn’t seem to have anyone in his life who cares about him. And so, when Markie invites Steef to have lunch with Markie after Steef gets out of the hospital, Steef immediately accepts the invitation.
“Busboys” then fast-forwards 16 years later. Markie and Steef are best friends and working for a sewage company called We Suck. In the role of Markie, Spade is once again playing the “straight man” to a comedic partner who plays a “wackier” character. It’s the type of role that Spade can do in his sleep, which would explain why his performance looks like “emotionally checked-out” sleepwalking.
Markie is supposed to be in his late 50s to early 60s. Steef is supposed to be in his early 30s. However, Von as adult Steef looks closer to the late 40s age range that Von really was when he filmed “Busboys.” That’s not the only thing about this moronoic movie that looks phony.
The sewage company scenes have predictable jokes about defecation when Markie and Steef are using a sewage funnel on a building. Their boss is a sleazy dork named Troy (played by Chris Elliott), who underpays Markie and Steef. While they are doing their sewage job, Markie and Steef get ridiculed by some mechanics who work nearby and by an obnoxious “frenemy” named Trevor (played by Trevor Wallace), who is a social media influencer.
Needless to say, Markie and Steef dislike their jobs at We Suck. The two simpleminded friends want to do something better with their lives. They decide to become busboys at a casual Mexican restaurant called Open Border Bistro, which has a large sign in front of the building to advertise that the restaurant is hiring busboys. Most of the putrid and soulless story in “Busboys” is about Markie and Steef’s misadventures in their pathetic attempts to be promoted from busboys to waiters.
The restaurant staff is led by boorish manager Tim (played by Tim Dillon) and assistant manager April (played by Michelle Ortiz). The other restaurant employees who get a lot of screen time are busboys: wheelchair-using Murderball (played by Jimmy Gonzales); vixenish Romina (played by Leah McKendrick); regular guy Gregor (played by Arturo Del Puerto); arrogant Rock (played by Christian Gnecco Quintero); busboy trainer Ginger (played by Vanessa Gonzalez); and Ginger’s 7-year-old transgender child Oscar (played by Tiago Martinez). Don’t expect an explanation for why a 7-year-old child is illegally working as a restaurant busboy. The only reason why Oscar is in the movie is so this repulsive movie can make a transgender kid the target of some stupid jokes.
“Busboys” also has a very boring subplot about Markie getting involved in a love triangle. In the beginning of the movie, Markie’s girlfriend Pam (played by Charlotte McKinney), who works as an OnlyFans type of model, makes it known to Markie that she’s becoming bored with him. When Markie and Pam have dinner at a restaurant, she flirts with an unnamed good-looking waiter (played by Patrick Sanderson), who shows an interest in her. This waiter later becomes a rival to Markie for Pam’s affections.
“Busboys” is the type of sexist “bro” comedy where most of the women under the age of 35 have large breasts and wear outfits that show off their ample cleavage. The men in the movie are not expected to reveal their scantily clad bodies in such an exploitative way. It’s the type of delusional fantasy movie where a busboy like Markie can have a girlfriend who looks like an OnlyFans model who’s young enough to be his adult daughter.
Markie and Steef come up with a mindless plan to get their “dream jobs” as waiters: The two low-IQ pals decide to become drug dealers, in order to get enough money to buy a restaurant. In other words, Markie and Steef think that the best way to become waiters is to own the restaurant where they would be waiters.
Of course, there are big problems that happen when Steef and Markie go into the drug-dealing business, where they plan to sell cocaine. Their first big drug buy is a disaster. They are immediately caught by Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents, as part of an ongoing undercover sting. The DEA agents make a deal with Markie and Steef that Markie and Steef won’t go to prison if they become confidential informants for the DEA.
The rest of “Busboys” has even more tedious and witless drudgery that is an endurance test to watch. Everything in “Busboys” looks like poorly conceived sketches haphazardly thrown together. And one of the worst things about the movie is Markie and Steef aren’t believable as longtime friends. Markie looks like a creep latching onto a much-younger guy who has “daddy issues.”
Spade and Von are both stand-up comedians and podcasters in real life, but Spade has a lot more actor experience than Von. It’s probably why Spade looks bored and gives a very lackluster performance in “Busboys.” Von does more facial mugging for the camera than acting.
“Busboys” tries to prop up its rotten corpse of a screenplay with quick cameos of famous comedians in disposable roles. The aforementioned Elliott has one of these cameos. So does Jay Pharoah, doing a demeaning role as an unnamed “crackhead” DEA agent. Bobby Lee has a small role in the movie has an injured restaurant customer named Sammy.
Some of the scenes in the movie are horrendous, it’s almost as if the movie is daring viewers to sit and hate watch all of this onslaught of idiocy. There’s a scene where Steef and Markie are in Markie’s car on a freeway when suddenly, dozens of rabbits (which are obvious computer-generated imagery) appear in front of them. Markie keeps driving, as the sounds of bodies being run over are heard in the movie. When the car stops, it’s covered in what’s supposed to look like splattered rabbit flesh.
Spade is no stranger to doing intentionally tacky comedy films. “Busboys” might get comparisons to Spade’s “Joe Dirt” (2001) or “Tommy Boy” (1995), but “Busboys” isn’t even close to being as funny as those two movies. “Busboys” is also proof that Spade needs a very talented comedic partner in movies, because he can’t elevate a terrible screenplay on his own as the biggest star in the film.
If “Busboys” is trying to appeal to audiences younger than Generation X and millennials, it fails miserably. The movie takes place in the mid-2020s, but the soundtrack is mostly stuck in the previous century, with songs such as Kid Rock’s “Cowboy” (1998), Poison’s “Something to Believe In” (1990), Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio” (1982) and Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work” (1972). The “Busboys” soundtrack is one of the movie’s few aspects that isn’t an inept abomination.
Bad movies get made all the time. But when atrocious and mind-numbing films like “Busboys” get dumped into the world, they usually don’t get released in theaters, where consumers are charged higher prices than if they rented the movie or saw it at no extra charge on a streaming service. Whether or not people pay to see “Busboys” or see it for free, it’s still a ripoff and a collossal waste of time.
The Barnum Picture Company released “Busboys” in U.S. cinemas on April 18, 2026.
