DVD Review: The Onion Movie

The Onion might actually live up to its claim of being "America's Finest News Source." After all, half the time it's no less accurate (give or take a lie), and all of the time it's much more entertaining. And even if fake news isn't always your thing, hopefully you can at least appreciate the satire and social commentary.

Because satire is what The Onion does best, and which is why the news format works so well for them. It's topical, skewering the more outrageous events of the day in real time. Between the print and online versions, they can pretty much lambaste anyone or anything at a moment's notice; all they have to do is wake up their writers and offer to bring in lunch. And if you need something a little more "authentic" - if that word could ever be applied to The Onion - then you can check out their video podcasts, where realistic, almost lifelike, talking heads do their best with the news they're given.

Which brings us to The Onion Movie. It's some of the humor, minus the topical, and then covered in Zucker Brothers gravy. Actually, that's exactly what it's like.

The film holds on to the loosest of premises — The Onion news broadcast is taken over by a conglomerate, forced to incorporate shameless ad promos, and hilarity ensues as an excuse to string together a montage of skits, ADD style. There are some recurring gags - the most prevalent and most effective revolves around a Steven Seagal action movie called Cockpuncher - mixed in with a lot of one-off gags, eerily similar in format to either Kentucky Fried Movie or Amazon Women On The Moon.

The pacing for the film is an odd mixture of actual news spoofs, a la their video podcast, with completely random skits that generally end with a headline on a newspaper to tie it back in. The movie works best when it sticks to the news, as many of the other bits are more tiresome. Some are quite funny, some are funny enough the first time, and others are either too slapstick for the The Onion's style or just wear out their welcome by being too long.

Article Author: David R Perry

Lost somewhere in the rolling hills of Tennessee, David R Perry can occasionally be found doing dark, unspeakable things to words. Printed words, spoken words, electronically mangled words... really any kind but twittered words.

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