The Onion Movie

Filmed in 2003 and put on the shelf when the test screenings didn’t go well, then released direct to DVD. Sketch comedy movies are just about always hit and miss, so what you want is a good ratio of stuff you laughed at to stuff you just sat there and watched. I’d give this one a ratio of about 80%, which is pretty good for this kind of thing. And it gets even better when you realize, as I did, that the stuff I did laugh at was very, very funny. Real belly-laugh stuff. Even the ones that missed the mark suffered mostly from amateurish editing, running a bit too long, than from a failure of the comic idea itself. Since the National Lampoon people got lame and unfunny, some of the very best humor to be found these days is at The Onion, and this shows that it was true even ten years ago.