Product Description: This just in...The Onion invades DVD! Based on the wildly popular newspaper hailed by The New Yorker as the funniest publication in the United States The Onion Movie brings you uncensored uninhibited UNRATED news and views from around the world. In a stunning development when Onion News anchorman Norm Archer (Len Cariou) is asked to compromise his journalistic integrity to please a new corporate sponsor he doesn t just get mad he gets...angry. Taking aim at pop stars prisoners peace talks and of course high-testosterone action films The Onion Movie delivers hard-hitting headlines and side-splitting laughs!System Requirements:Running Time: 80 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/PARODY & SPOOF Rating: NR UPC: 024543518945 Manufacturer No: 2251894
Amazon.com: Shelved since 2003 then released straight to DVD, the feature-length Onion Movie is based on the satirical nationwide newspaper The Onion, which works better in print than on celluloid. That said, hardcore Onion fans will appreciate this effort to enliven text with filmed comedic sketches that strongly resemble Saturday Night Live news and National Lampoon. Directors Tom Kuntz and Mike Maguire translate what would normally read as sarcastic headlines into slapstick skits starring three news reporters, Norm Archer (Len Cariou), Larissa Laskin (Dana Dobbs), and Scott Klace (Kip Kendall), reporting on idiotic events either live or in the studio. The newsreel opens, for example, with a report from Archer on the dangers of "neck belts" in automobiles, that have lately been decapitating drivers. Spoofs on everyone and everything, from slutty teen stars, racial stereotyping, the handicapped, to military recruitment officials turned peaceful by marijuana, add plenty of characteristically perverse and iffy Onion humor to this odd film. The Onion Movie relies loosely on a plot in which Norm Archer, devoted anchorman, protests a toy penguin interrupting his screen time in the name of advertising an upcoming film, Cockpuncher, that the network’s corporate sponsor, Global Tetrahedron, has funded. This facetious action film featuring Steven Seagal, looks a little too life-like after Norm takes measures to fight the power. At an hour and a half, news skits interrupted by fake commercials and Archer’s fits of rage feel played out, though skit-to-skit, the news broadcasts are quite hilarious, making the film an overall winner if you’re in the mood for mockery. --Trinie Dalton
Worth The Price Just To See Mousie Garner's Last Film Role The Onion Movie is definitely worth the purchase price if only to see Mousie Garner, the last surviving member of Ted Healy's Three Stooges comedy troupe, in his very last comedic film performance. Garner, (born: July 31, 1909 - died: August 8, 2004), was 95 years old when he signed on to The Onion Movie to play the role of "Uncle Smackers." Garner, who enjoyed a 75 year career as a popular stage, screen, radio and television comedian, died only a few months after filmming a variety of sequences for this film. Don't miss the very special deleted scene where Garner interacts with The Onion's voluptuous video vixen!
Did not translate from the written version America's Finest News Source makes for fantasatic entertaining print. Unfortunately, it didn't translate too well for the movie. There was some humor (a parody of Brittney Sprears and Steve Seagal doing a self-parody) but overall it didn't translate well to the screen. The subversive dark humor was there, but perhaps a little too much Leslie Nielsenesque humor with it.
The movie was 80 minutes long, and that was at least 20 minutes too much.
I cannot say enough bad things about this movie This movie was apparently shot in 2003 and then shelved after poor test-screenings. This was a good decision. The sketches are poorly written. The acting is tolerable at best. The film as a whole is comedically tone-deaf to a degree seldom reached by even the worst articles from the print edition. Not even fans of the Onion should watch this movie; to the contrary, if you're used to the usually high quality of the articles and internet videos then you will find "The Onion Movie" to be one of the most painful viewing experiences of your entire life.
Firstly, the movie doesn't seem to know what it is. It begins in the form of an evening news broadcast, but soon evolves into a series of unrelated sketches. The two formats transition between one another laboriously and pointlessly. Every joke fizzles. Every punchline is either entirely without comedic merit or so poorly delivered that it falls painfully and awkwardly flat.
The Onion works best when it parodies the news media. If they had gone all in with the news-broadcast-parody theme, they could have had something. But as the anchor rattles off headlines in rapidfire succession, frequently interrupted by tangential segments featuring Steven Seagal, any potentially funny similarities to television news disappear.
Avoid this film at all costs. I did not laugh once.
SoSo I got a few laughs from this movie, but even after paying 8 bucks for it used, I should have just saved for something else.
There Are Better Onions After occasionally reading an Onion newspaper, I had some idea what I was getting into here. However, I felt that much of the film didn't live up to the cutting-edge satire of the newspaper. The movie consists of a series of comedy sketches bound together by the Onion's lack of reverence for anything and a tepid plot line.
Some of the segments were very funny. I thought Sarah McElligott was quite vibrant as Melissa Cherry, a Britney Spears clone. The skit about the "reformed" bank robber was great. Steven Seagal's martial arts spoof had its moments. But many of the routines fell flat, and some were so tasteless that they were actually...tasteless.
The core of the Onion--take no prisoners, nothing is sacred--was there. But as the layers were peeled off, a lot didn't smell like an Onion.
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