The Onion Movie – DVD Review

Film, Reviews

theonionmovie
Available at Amazon.com

Most of us have either read or heard of The Onion newspaper. Although most of us would never think of turning a newspaper into a movie, and that’s what this movie tries to do. Now I know what most of you are thinking, “How do you turn a newspaper into a movie? You can turn a newspaper story into a movie, but how do you turn a newspaper into a movie?” And to that I say, you answered yourself.

This is not your typical movie where something happens to the antagonist and he/she spends the rest of the movie doing something about it. Yes, there is a story that follows that general formula, but it isn’t the focus of the movie until the last 15 minutes. The movie itself is basically a collection of stories turned into skits. It’s kind of a cross of “The Daily Show” and “MadTV”. They take the silly news items that have made The Onion famous, and do their damnedest to turn them into a funny skit. But as hard, or not, as they try, the skits are just not funny. The news stories are funny enough when read by the anchor Norm Archer (Len Cariou), but the skits are just plain bad.

Interspersed throughout the skits are more skits of people watching the show as if it were an actual newscast. And they use these to move along a plot you have no idea exists. Something you’re watching and thinking is just another stupid skit, actually comes back around later in the movie and is important.

The main story that’s easier to follow despite being buried under the skits, is of Norm Archer’s displeasure with the way the station is implementing advertising in the broadcast by having a cartoon penguin walk across the screen and promote the newscast’s parent company and that companies blockbuster movie.

There are two scenes where he walks back and talks to the producers about the advertising, and 3 or 4 times when the penguin walks across and does some promoting, and that’s all the more attention that is paid to that storyline the first 60 minutes of the movie. This leads to Norm talking on camera about how the producers are trying to corrupt his journalistic morals, if you’ve seen News at 11, anyone?…no?…Bueller?, it’s quite similar to the piece by Martin Sheen at the end of that movie.

His monologue is then interrupted by terrorists and all the random things from earlier in the movie you thought were gone, come back and set everything straight again for a nice happy ending.

There’s nothing really to talk about cinematically or sound wise or editing wise. The movie is set up to show like a newscast and that’s what it does. Everyone has a mic, so there’s no problems with sound. There’s no problems with camera work because it’s basically a camera on Archer and then either B-Roll with him talking over it, or a package with one of the correspondents.


The Onion Movie is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and the audio is 5.1 Dolby Digital.


For extras we get trailers for The Darjeeling Limited, Burn Notice: Season 1, and Futurama: Beast with a Million Backs, 9 minutes of deleted scenes (Most of which are pretty good) and a four-minute blooper reel.


It is The Onion, but it’s really low quality Onion stuff. The skits aren’t that funny and the news stories that are funny are only good for a laugh once. There is a story but it’s buried and not important until the last 15 minutes. So really, this is a movie that’s pretty easy to bypass in the store.

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20th Century Fox Presents The Onion Movie. Starring Len Cariou, Steven Seagal, and Sarah McElligott. Written by Todd Hanson and Robert Siegel. Running time: 80 minutes. Not Rated. Released on DVD: June 3rd, 2008. Available at Amazon.com.