Typical Neighbor Wife. Landmine Salesman. White Black Guy Judge. Library Penis Man. C — puncher Entourage. These are just some of the roles listed in the credits of The Onion Movie, a 2008 direct-to-DVD film inspired by America’s Finest News Source, The Onion. Written by Onion writers Todd Hanson and Robert D. Siegel, and directed by two commercial and music video directors (credited as “James Kleiner”), it’s as eclectic and ridiculous as those roles suggest — though, sadly, not as good as its namesake.
There’s not much story here. Instead, the film plays like a sketch show, with comical vignettes loosely connected to build off one another. Sketches later in the film callback to earlier sketches, giving it layers like an onion — er, a cake. To clarify, The Onion Movie does have a narrative — Onion News Network anchor Norm Archer (Len Cariou) tries to maintain The Onion’s journalistic integrity after megacorporation Global Tetrahedron acquires it — but it’s mainly a framing device.
The film’s technique is predictably unremarkable, given its structure, low budget, and deliberately minimal story. The Melissa Cherry (Sarah McElligott) music videos, homoerotic sequences, and climactic action scene have at least some artistic flair. Otherwise, the cinematography, color, sound, and editing are merely adequate.
Like the satirical newspaper itself, the jokes range from uproarious to dreadful. The Onion Movie’s most consistently funny sketches are the news parodies — The Onion’s forte. Cariou’s grave delivery of ludicrous headlines works perfectly. Fans of absurdist, crude humor will enjoy the running gag about an upcoming Steven Seagal movie called C — puncher or the report featuring the world’s first comatose diver. Its biting social commentary targets racial profiling, police brutality, the military-industrial complex, the takeover of news media by large corporations, and more.
The Onion Movie has a clear liberal slant, but it’s not politically correct: it includes rape jokes, white characters using the n-word, and ironic homophobia. Whether these jokes work is, of course, subjective, but they will undoubtedly bother some viewers, even some sympathetic to the film’s politics. Its worst sketches feel like bad Saturday Night Live: they include the predictable role-playing nerds sketch, the underwhelming fourth-wall-breaking “Focus on Film” interludes, and the utterly tactless “How to Host a Rape” skit.
As funny as this film is sometimes, it never equals The Onion’s pre-2013 web video material. Under the Onion News Network name, they made brief TV news parodies, and with a higher success-failure ratio than the movie. Today Now, a morning show mockery; In the Know with Clifford Banes, a goofy roundtable show whose eponymous host is perpetually absent; and their standard news report spoofs translate their trademark humor to video far more dependably than their feature film.
Still, longtime Onion readers and fans of news satire and absurd humor should watch The Onion Movie at least once — as long as they’re prepared for discomfort. Though some of its jokes fail, it offers more hilarious highlights than cringe-compilation clips. And anchorman Norm Archer concludes with civility, style, and professionalism: “F — you, and goodnight.”
