Unlike the excellent Web site, 'Onion Movie' is just layers of lame sketches
By Bruce Dancis
McClatchy Newspapers
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.07.2008
The Onion may continue to thrive as a satirical, fake news Web site, newspaper and publisher of books, but "The Onion Movie," a straight-to-DVD release, is a tired sketch-comedy collection.
When the most topical subject for humor is a lame skit about an "Al Q'Utaya" training video, and when smutty little jokes triumph over genuine mirth, viewers will quickly realize that we're in National Lampoon movie territory rather than on the turf of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."
Debuting on DVD this week, "The Onion Movie" (Fox Home Entertainment, $26.98, not rated) is set up as a newscast anchored by the veteran Norm Archer (Len Cariou). Onion humor generally takes something real — such as new national legislation restricting public places where people can smoke, or debate in Southern states about the Confederate flag remaining part of their state flags — and pushes it to extremes. At its best, a printed Onion joke is a one-liner that first shocks you and then makes you laugh.
Hence, the Onion newscast dutifully reports that Congress has passed a law restricting smoking to a single room in Iowa, near Des Moines, and we see the traffic jams this causes. Or we learn that the state of Georgia has added a swastika and a middle finger to the Confederate symbol on its state flag.
Then there's the entertainment news portion of the newscast, in which a reporter (Scott Klace) interviews pop sensation Melissa Cherry (Sarah McElligott) — a cross between Madonna and Britney Spears — about her sexually explicit songs and salacious videos. The joke is that when challenged by the reporter, the demurely dimwitted Melissa says, "I honestly don't understand what all the fuss is about."
When pushed about one particularly suggestive song and video (whose title cannot be reprinted in a family newspaper), she responds, "It's about being a girl and having fun."
A running joke on the newscast is a series of commercials and on-screen crawls advertising a new movie starring Steven Seagal — again, we can't print the title, but it's about a fighter who specializes in what boxing calls low blows — that's been made by the Onion's corporate parent, Global Tetrahedron. This leads to repeated fights over the newscast's integrity between anchor Archer and the venal corporate honchos.
Some of the sketches are rehashes of jokes that never were very funny, even in their more original form. There's a running joke about the "Queen Nathan II" cruise ship — it caters to a gay clientele — but it's basically a rip-off of an old Adam Sandler/Chris Farley skit on "Saturday Night Live" and the mediocre movie comedy "Boat Trip."
Other jokes are just cruel, particularly one about a group of Alzheimer's patients leading a protest march on Washington to demand "a cure for pancakes," where their main speaker — of course — forgets what she's supposed to be saying; and another with Michael Bolton making fun of African children funds.
With the jokes and sketches flying by, some do manage to hit their mark. There's an OK skit about computer obsolescence involving a hapless consumer who trades in his Bates 1000 for the Bates 4000 — only to find out in short order that his "new" model has been replaced by the 6000, 7000, 8000 and finally the Bates 9000.
And there's some edgy humor involving race in America: One skit finds an African-American "Armed Gun Man" with a stocking over his face being offered a job as a customer service supervisor in a local bank, while another has a hip-hop-obsessed white teenager who's trying to act and sound "black" getting arrested for a crime allegedly committed by a black man.
But "The Onion Movie," written by longtime Onion staffers Robert Siegel and Todd Hanson, is neither daring enough nor funny enough to compete with such first-rate satirists as Jon Stewart, Christopher Guest, Steven Colbert or Larry David. And by relying too much on cheap sex jokes and pandering profanity (as opposed to genuinely creative profanity), "The Onion Movie" ends up being tired and sophomoric at the same time.
Yet before we all start crying tears over the decline of the Onion, it should be noted that this movie has had a troubled history. Shooting actually began at least four years ago, and the project has been shelved and restarted several times. It was reported in 2006 that writer Robert Siegel, a former Onion editor, had left the production.
At this point, it isn't clear whether the Onion staff had any control over the final product — phone calls to the Onion and Fox Home Entertainment have not been returned. But an ad for the "The Onion Movie" is running on the Onion Web site, www.theonion.com.
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