Too much of everything

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Blistering performances.

That's right, the Onion News Network made a movie, back in 2008, and it's every bit as irreverent, satirical and wantonly bizarre as you would imagine. They have been comically killing it for years with their online platform, and the film is a nice extension of that. It's episodic, meandering and devoid of plot, made up of many little sketches and vignettes, some gut bustingly funny, others just plain odd. I have three favourites which pretty much sum up their inane, Monty Python type shtick: An out of work actor named Bryce Brand (Nick Chinlund is priceless I just a few minutes of screen time) arrives back home from drug rehab and is hounded by his agent to nab new scripts. He promptly falls into a weird new addiction that gets slapped sillily onto the headlines, thus ending his arc with deranged efficiency. Steven Seagal shows up as a fat slob of an action hero aptly named 'The Cock Puncher', a lumbering buffoon who punches people in the cock, naturally. The third, and funniest sequence features a riff on the celebrity roasts of the 60's, with some kind of amazing group of crusty old crooners hurling stinging and incredibly raunchy insults at each other with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It's tough explain just how funny that bit is in a review, but suffice to say it had me roaring as loud as the obscene bunch of wrinkled baboons in the in the skit. There's a plethora of other sequences which I've since gotten hazy about, but I remember many other instances of pure hilarity to be had. Watch for further celebrity appearances including Eric Stolhanske, Michael Bolton, Richard Fancy, Daniel Dae Kim, Brendan Fletcher, Rodney Dangerfield, Joel McHale and more. Side splitting stuff, if you're into this type of humour.

Since the Scary Movie films, we've had to endure Date Movie, Epic Movie Disaster Movie, Dance Flick ad nauseum; it seems this trend will never end. 20th Century Fox, who are distributing The Onion Movie clearly didn't know how to handle this movie in the UK, so they slapped the new title News Movie on it.The Onion Movie is a lot better than the collection of weak parodies it's been lumped in with. While it is true that some of the satire has dated and more than a handful of the jokes lack great punchlines, the fact is that this is still an amusing way to spend 75 minutes. The majority of the film takes the form of mock news broadcasts, from America's Finest News Source – The Onion. Eventually a slight narrative thread begins to link the sequences and a denouement brings it all together. But like some other films with the "Movie" moniker it's all essentially an afterthought.Steven Seagal almost steals the movie in a spoof trailer for a film called Cockpuncher but it's the over-the-top Britney Spears parodies written by Asche & Spencer that are the highlights. Performed by Lisa Marie Furth, the songs of the imaginary Melissa Cherry character (played by Sarah McElliot) are near perfect imitations of conventional pop tunes and it's a shame that no soundtrack is available.Directed by Tom Kuntz and Mike Maguire (but credited to James Kleiner), The Onion Movie was produced by David Zucker, director of the first two The Naked Gun movies and the last two Scary Movie sequels among many others. While it doesn't come close to the former it's certainly no worse than the latter. In this age of lazy comedy writing that's probably the most praise one give a film like this.

Think "Kentucky Fried Movie", or "Amazon Women on the Moon", only without many laughs. Twenty five years ago, "The Onion Movie" might have been considered outrageous, unfortunately today it must be considered for the most part, dated and decidedly not funny. Stereotyping the handicapped, homosexuals, and minorities, may have worked way back when, but now seems quite old and tired. The news anchor's battle with an annoying penguin, neck belts, and cooking with kitty's are the few brief bright spots, but sitting through the remaining eighty minute running time is not worth it........ Not recommended. - MERK

Calling THE ONION MOVIE a "movie" would be like calling JACKASS THE MOVIE a "movie". They are skits that should be seen on television programs, not relegated to such terms as sustainable films or "movies".The only upside The Onion Movie can claim is that it does come closer to having one storyline that is movie-ish. That storyline is played by Len Cariou (FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS) who portrays a fictional newscaster named Norm Archer. He doles out the fake news with deadpan expression while battling his networks overzealous campaign at advertising for one of its heavy hitter investors.The skit jokes take up most of this "movie's" thankfully short 80 minute run time. Cock Puncher Steven Seagal lends his Kung Fu talents to show off his latest upcoming, over-the-top, action flick, a film with broad-based appeal if you're in to crushing low-blows. Other not-so-funny moments are given over to a group of neighbors who invite a young woman over to play a game called Murder but change it up to a game called Rape (not funny at all). The shorter skits get the funnier laughs, though. The infamous "neck belts" put out by car manufacturers that cause explosive decapitation is pretty darned hilarious, as is the overtly sexy songs of a Brittany Spears-like singer who claims complete innocence regarding her rump pumping actions.Finally, the film ends on a pretty funny high-note for me. I'm not a cat person but I know people who are, so when I saw the final skit that "didn't make the cut for the movie", I nearly laughed myself silly. Rolling the cats in bread crumbs then plopping them in a pot of boiling oil was simply awesome.But the film, as a whole, has a lot of problems. Trying to interweave Norm Archer's newscasts with that of the skits really made the entire production feel off-balance. Which could be why this "movie" never made it to the silver screen and sat on a shelf for nearly 4 years before being released straight to DVD.