Review of The Onion Movie (2008) by Ben T — 30 Mar 2017

After having viewed this movie for maybe the 20th time since release for some old friends, I became curious and decided that I wanted to bring the movie up on RT to see how much higher the audience score would be compared to the critics' scores, which for a movie like this would undoubtedly be in the toilet (because who listens to these "film expert assholes" anyway?

I was shocked and appalled by what I saw and read. So much so that I felt compelled to create an RT account for the express purpose of composing a meaningful review and refuting all the stupidity and ignorance I see in the reviews from both the two critics.

This is one of my top 5 favorite comedies of all time, without question, and has been since the first time I viewed this after coming across the DVD on some idle Tuesday in a Walmart in 2008. Along with almost everything that Mike Judge has ever made, this is not only a masterpiece of comedic genius, but is also tragically and stunningly under appreciated and underrated.

The Onion franchise is 90% pure satirical genius, and I disagree completely that the genius the Onion is known for didn't translate into this movie. It's certainly not perfect. The pacing slows down way too much at one or two points in the movie. A few of the skits go on for too long (particularly the end) while some of the deleted scenes were essential in providing some missing context to some of the skits. But it's clear that Todd Hanson and Robert Siegel had a hand in writing 90% of the skits, and they have NOTHING to be ashamed of nor anything for which to aplogize.

The comparisons to Kentucky Fried Movie and other legitimate pieces of garbage are simply preposterous. This is not a well-polished A movie, but the cinematographic quality for what it is is extremely high. Hell, the fact that some bits of the movie were pieced together haphazardly after the fact actually ADDS character to this movie (the scene where Norm is marching angrily to the Onion executives' office was straight up repeated once, and it was amazing). Most of the casting was pure genius. The Masses, the Jewish curmudgeon old lady who chooses The Negro from the police lineup, Kip Kendall, Melissa Cherry, the film experts, and all the cameos. All were completely thoughtful performances and were executed with perfection.

If you are of a reasonably high intellectual caliber, have a wide enough repertoire of pop culture and history, and have an actual sense of humor unencumbered by PC bullshit, then you will agree with this review completely. Humorless, Type A ice queen types (your RA in college) will definitely hate this. But those people don't have sense of humor.

The satire of this is biting, shockingly prescient and current, and at least half the skits will leave you on the floor laughing over and over again.