BUSBOYS stars the real Joe Dirt and the fake one, though which is which depends on how you look at it. David Spade played the character. Theo Von is the character.
There are only three reasons to visit Monroe, Washington: the fair, the courthouse, or the movies. I already had the first two stamped on my bingo card, so that left the movies. The Galaxy Theatres Monroe has been the only cinema in the area for a while now, a standalone multiplex off Highway 2 that feels less like a chain and more like something the town had been waiting for. Driving into the parking lot, I expected something tired. What I got felt like time traveling, in a good way. The arcade in the corner and the simple concession stand aren't retro affectations — they're just what the place has always been. The auditoriums have been upgraded over the years, recliners now, proper sound, but the walk in felt like a warm, comfortable blanket I didn't know I'd been missing. BUSBOYS was the right movie for that feeling to come back to.
The movie begins with a dying dog, a car, and a bad decision that starts a friendship. Steefen Barn — that name alone tells you the kind of movie you're in, a name that's slightly wrong in a way that implies an entire biography — is a man who never quite recovered from his father going to prison for murder. A teacher embarrasses him in class over it, he quits high school on the spot, and walking out he gets hit by a car. The car belongs to Markie Montgomery. Markie, in a panic, pretends to be a good Samaritan and takes Steefen to the hospital, a lie he carries through the rest of the film. In the hospital room he meets Steefen's mother, who is quietly hoping her son doesn't make it — the insurance payout would cover a surgery she wants — specifically, a penis. Steefen survives. He and Markie become best friends. This is the foundation on which everything else is built, and it is completely insane. Somehow it holds.
“Do you think my mom will be happier when she's my dad, or is that dumb?”
— STEEFEN BARN, BUSBOYS
What BUSBOYS is actually about, underneath the carnage, is Steefen's need for a father. Steefen is working toward paying for that surgery himself. His logic, stated plainly: he wants to give his mother the thing his father couldn't provide, to become the dad he no longer has. The film wraps this in enough chaos that you almost don't notice it landing. Then it does. “Kindness is never dumb” is the thesis of the whole film, and it never treats it like a big deal.
I've listened to hundreds of hours of Theo Von's podcast. Seeing him on screen is a strange experience — you know exactly what he sounds like when he's coasting, so you know when he's not. Von is not coasting — he plays Steefen's father-shaped absence with a conviction that the film's surrounding absurdity actually protects. The funniest character name in the movie belongs to him, which is not a coincidence. Steefen, with an F. Someone gave him that name earnestly. It tells you everything about the world he came from.
You can tell Von and Spade are genuinely friends. The chemistry is real, even if it isn't quite what you might have hoped for coming in. The Spade-Farley dynamic was built on extremity and contrast, two people whose differences were so pronounced they generated their own gravity. Von is a different kind of foil — more internally strange than externally chaotic — and the dynamic between them is quieter, more lived-in.
Tim Dillon as Manager Tim is perfect. Dillon, to my knowledge, has never worked in food service. He's a dedicated observer and an enthusiastic connoisseur of fine dining. Manager Tim is a restaurant manager the way restaurant managers actually are — not a caricature, not a movie version, but the real thing. The film's casting instincts are generally good. Bobby Lee plays Samuel, a busboy at another restaurant who Steefen and Markie regard as something close to a legend. This is funny because of how small the thing being mythologized is. Jay Pharoah as a crackhead DEA Agent is exactly what that sentence sounds like, and it works.
The drug subplot is where BUSBOYS runs thinnest. Steefen and Markie, passed over for waiter promotions and running out of money, decide to sell off-brand Dexatrim on the street. The logic tracks, given what the film has already told you about these two. The undercover high school sequence has a nice 21 JUMP STREET energy to it. Theo wearing a Blind Melon shirt to blend in with the teenagers is exactly the right detail. It doesn't quite sink the film, but it's the section where you feel the script working hardest to fill the middle.
The weakest moment comes late, when Steefen is about to be executed and reaches for the memory of his father taking him to vape shops as a kid. The specific detail — the Carcinogens Kids Club — hits on its own. The problem is that Steefen is supposed to be in his thirties, and vape shops didn't exist until around 2010. One anachronistic gag might slide past. But then his father enters the scene and extends the bit, describing every Sunday at the vape shop, the new flavors, the vomiting on the way home. The longer it runs, the more the timeline problem compounds. It's a rare slip in a movie that otherwise feels completely sure of itself.
I worked at a restaurant once. I was the dishwasher. Standing at that sink, I dreamed of becoming a busboy. Steefen and Markie dream of becoming waiters. They were already dreaming past where I ever got.
The closest point of comparison for BUSBOYS is DUDE WHERE'S MY CAR — a similar register of weaponized stupidity that somehow has a beating heart underneath it. BUSBOYS is the better film, and some of that is the self-financing. David Spade and Theo Von wrote it, produced it, and paid for it themselves, shooting it while the Palisades Fire was burning across Los Angeles. Nobody was notes-ing Von into safer choices. The looseness that comes through on screen is the looseness of a project that only had to answer to itself. There is no corporate stank on it. You can feel the difference.
The ending works. Markie gets the waiter promotion and turns it down. The speech he gives — I already have everything I wanted, I got a friend — is structured like a redemption arc and lands like one, which should make it feel predictable. It doesn't, partly because the film has built toward it, and partly because Markie immediately follows the sentiment by asking whether the promotion is transferable. He gives it to Ginger, the busboy who's been breaking her back throughout the film to provide for her family. They hug it out. Then Steefen calls her Ginja, loudly, almost affectionately, and somehow the moment is still completely sincere.
Maybe this is a dumb comedy, but it is not a dumb movie. The distinction matters, and BUSBOYS knows it matters, which is why it can put “kindness is never dumb” in Markie Montgomery's mouth without apology. It laughed me out of my seat more than anything I've seen recently. I'm not entirely sure if that's a compliment to BUSBOYS or an indictment of recent comedies. Possibly both.
Final Verdict: 75 out of 100