Since the Scary Movie films, we've had to endure Date Movie, Epic Movie Disaster Movie, Dance Flick ad nauseum; it seems this trend will never end. 20th Century Fox, who are distributing The Onion Movie clearly didn't know how to handle this movie in the UK, so they slapped the new title News Movie on it.The Onion Movie is a lot better than the collection of weak parodies it's been lumped in with. While it is true that some of the satire has dated and more than a handful of the jokes lack great punchlines, the fact is that this is still an amusing way to spend 75 minutes. The majority of the film takes the form of mock news broadcasts, from America's Finest News Source – The Onion. Eventually a slight narrative thread begins to link the sequences and a denouement brings it all together. But like some other films with the "Movie" moniker it's all essentially an afterthought.Steven Seagal almost steals the movie in a spoof trailer for a film called Cockpuncher but it's the over-the-top Britney Spears parodies written by Asche & Spencer that are the highlights. Performed by Lisa Marie Furth, the songs of the imaginary Melissa Cherry character (played by Sarah McElliot) are near perfect imitations of conventional pop tunes and it's a shame that no soundtrack is available.Directed by Tom Kuntz and Mike Maguire (but credited to James Kleiner), The Onion Movie was produced by David Zucker, director of the first two The Naked Gun movies and the last two Scary Movie sequels among many others. While it doesn't come close to the former it's certainly no worse than the latter. In this age of lazy comedy writing that's probably the most praise one give a film like this.

I've always loved The Onion website, and just recently they started the Onion News Network TV show. I love the show, and was looking forward to this movie, but it's such a disappointment. The idea behind the film is that it's like an extended news broadcast with reporters on the scene of a recent disaster, an interview with a Britney Spears-type character and an anchorman linking these, and more, together. In addition, there's a recurring advert for a Steven Seagal movie that pops up in various sketches. Bizarrely, there are also sketches where it's like a serious discussion of a film, but it's this film they're discussing. And they're not funny.I laughed once during the film and smiled a few times, but most often I was just waiting for one sketch to end and then next one to begin. There's very little of the type of humour I've come to expect from the website or the new TV show. It's like they tried to make it appeal to a larger audience, and in doing so they've stripped it of the often caustic humour that is so appealing. There are moments when it does shine through, but most often it's like a bland, regular TV sketch show, extended to 80 minutes.If you're a fan of The Onion, I would honestly tell you to avoid this movie. You will only be disappointed.

for all animal lovers please do not watch until the end. i do not know what is funny about frying kittens. all the comedy in this movie was fine, but whoever thought animal cruelty was funny is a sick twisted person. they even had the mother from family ties egging and breading the kittens and then put them in a pot of boiling oil...HOW IS THAT FUNNY? thats all the world needs is encouragement of this behavior!...again, this movie had me up until the end when i saw this horribly "funny" scene. i only saw the last hour of this movie, hopefully there was no more of these terrible details, but if it was not for this one scene (considering there was no more in the rest of the film) i would have given this movie a seven out of ten.

Although I get the point and nature of the comedy and the satire this movie uses, it seemed such a hopeless attempt. I barely laughed, the jokes are unfinished, unstudied and not ironic enough. This movie expects too much from itself, and there are far too many examples of how this type of humor should be used and understood, that "onion movie" just seems to have a lot of growing up to do. It's just some "scary movie" kind of jokes placed in some sort of smart comedy release wannabe. Some friends of mine praised it so much that I probably expected too much also; I'll just have to talk some sense into them and tell them that profound and kind-of-painful humor and irony go much higher than saying that music videos these days are almost porn.The acting was bad too; probably they believed it would add to the satire...