The Onion Movie. As good as one would expect. Maybe even better. (********8/10)
During the first 15 minutes of The Onion Movie, I laughed about as hard as I have ever laughed at a movie. I don’t think I’ve had this many laughs since Borat. Here is one of the biggest and best reasons why:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sQQcrM7A8Q
Steven Seagal, it seems, has learned to laugh at himself. And the world is a better place. I, however, am not really happy about it, because it means that my love for Seagal and his movies has to be re-evaluated. I have always enjoyed the man because he seemed so incapable of laughing at himself. Now my entire impression of him is shot. Perhaps - he’s NOT the deadly serious, mystical wisdome spewing jackass he appears to be on screen? Maybe he…actually understands the ridiculousness of his movies and the cheesiness of the tough-guy lines he spits out? That’s it. I’m giving away my copy of Belly Of The Beast. But boy, did that ever make me laugh.
Anyway, the first fifteen minutes are hilarious. But after that, the movie begins to lose steam. The Onion is the best fake-news source on the web (www.theonion.com), and it has always been a very sharp, biting satire of mainstream news. And the movie itself is just that. Sharp, and biting. But it’s also hit-and-miss. The best bits, like that Seagal trailer, are spread throughout the movie. There is another great Dungeons and Dragons skit, the Melissa Cherry music videos are as funny as they are hot, and Michael Bolton’s infomercial for “What About The Children” is priceless. But the entire movie is just a series of sketches and vignettes and fake news stories. Which has about a fifteen minute shelf-life. And so the last hour of the movie becomes fairly tedious, and hard to sit through.
But there is enough really good, witty, incisive and politically incorrect stuff in there to keep us going. The rape party game, “Little Known Racial Stereotypes”, and the story about the Pope condemning three more glands are fantastic. “This brings the total number of sinful human body parts to eleven”. The landmine salesman, and the basketball player who blames God for a loss - all priceless. But it’s like watching an hour and a half of a really great sketch comedy show that was intended to be watched in fifteen minute episodes. The ending, although there IS an ending, and it DOES wrap things up in a final-episode-of-Seinfeld sort of way, is fairly lame.
There are also several sketches that don’t really work. The penis-removal team, the Gil Bates thing - get it? Gil Bates? He runs a software company? But the constant references to Seagal’s upcoming blockbuster movie make the poorly done stuff easier to swallow. Watch the Onion movie. Well, watch that trailer (posted above). Then decide if you want to watch the rest. Then watch it 15 minutes at a time.