I had nearly forgotten about The Onion Movie. The sketch-comedy-formatted film spin-off of the brilliant newspaper satire was made about four years ago and then was abandoned by original distributor Fox Searchlight. According to Wikipedia, it performed badly with test audiences, and when it was shelved and then dropped by the studio, the filmmakers — co-directors Tom Kuntz and Mike Maguire and screenwriter Robert Siegel (formerly editor of The Onion) — also walked away from the project. It spent the next few years involved in attempted rescue operations by New Regency and actor-writer Scott Aukerman (Run Ronnie Run!). Now, finally this trailer has shown up on the DVD of Fox Searchlight’s The Darjeeling Limited, implying that the studio will be dumping it to DVD sometime this year.
As you can see, there was good reason for Fox to have initially distanced itself from the movie. It makes the similar-structured The Kentucky Fried Movie look like a masterpiece (I understand it’s considered a classic for some, but it’s by no means a masterpiece). And, well, it even makes the recent parody films like Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans seem like masterpieces. Considering that after 20 years in print and 12 years online, the actual newspaper is consistently intelligent, cutting-edge, relevant and, most of all, hilarious, it’s quite disappointing to see how stale are the gags in the film. While it may be funny to see the decapitation caused by a neckbelt, the concept as a whole is illogical and unimaginative. And the smoking ban joke? Maybe topical in 2004, but even then the gag would have been put to better use in a Tonight Show monologue.
The only thing that saves this trailer, and perhaps the movie, is Steven Seagal in the fake trailer for a movie called Cock Puncher. Unfortunately, many of us had already heard about the sketch, or the character at least, years ago, courtesy of the movie’s IMDb cast/character listing. So, even though we now get to see how sorta funny it is, we saw it coming. Plus, while it seems to poke fun at how lowbrow entertainment has become, it also affirms the fact by being the only really appealing part of the movie.
One Comment
Wow, Chris, that’s so cutting-edge of you, to dismiss a movie based on its trailer and four-years-in-the-vault status. You’ve gotta have some amazing stones to do that, man!!! You are as brave as you are talented!