Farce of the Penguins

When I first started this movie I had high hopes. The first five minutes seemed quite funny with Samuel L. Jackson's narration and the promising all-star cast. I assumed the reason few people liked this was because it had a sort of "stupid" sense of humor as seen in movies like Kung Pow that few people appreciated. Unfortunately, even with so many big names in this movie, it was difficult to find any humor at all in this.

The majority of the movie revolved around Bob Saget and Lewis Black's characters chatting back and forth about walking far and finding a mate. What made the movie bad wasn't its juvenile sense of humor, but rather the lack of overall jokes. What was shown was simply Bob Saget reenacting his job as host of America's Funniest Home Videos when he used to provide voiceovers to the five second clips in order to make them only slightly more amusing. But considering there isn't much amusing about penguins in the first place, Saget couldn't do much to make it funnier than the thoughts everyone with any sense of humor whatsoever was thinking while watching March of the Penguins.

I'll admit that the horrid editing didn't make me dislike the movie as much as the humor, but it is definitely worth mentioning that it had to have been done by someone with no real experience in the editing field. For example, when one penguin farts in the movie, a large transparent red circle appears near it. I don't know what the editor was trying to do to make the fart more visible by using a red circle. Had they added in something like a green colored gas effect, it would have been more appealing. Another example is how some of the clips blatantly reverse themselves to stay on screen while the actors talk. Very little effort was put into this movie, though considering how little the makers had to do (Nearly all the footage was cheap stock footage), they must have made a fortune by spending so little money on this.

The reason I didn't give this a score of 1 was because I'll admit that I did laugh a few times, and I appreciate that the movie recognized itself as a bad movie, like when penguins from the March of the Penguins scoff at how dumb the humor is, when the writers are depicted as a monkey banging on a typewriter, and when Samuel L. Jackson apologizes for not having the budget to make the penguins' mouths move. Still, I would not recommend this movie to anyone, regardless of their sense of humor.

This extremely minimal production yarn might be an embarrassing excuse for a mockumentery, but is not the completely useless piece of celluloid trash that some are making it out to be. Keeping in the stoner-addled tradition of things in fact, one may even squeeze off a few scatological belly laughs in the otherwise depressingly low-brow, low budget affair. Apparently it boils down to this: Writer/Director Bob Saget has a lot of friends in Hollywood. They may not all be on top of their game, many even out of the limelight for some time, but a common friend indeed they have with their oft-ridiculed, former television dork dad.

What Saget gets to exploit out of this is a plethora of B-listers, which makes for an impressive cast on paper….but do not be fooled. On top of the disengaging sound quality which reeks of home studio, almost all of the frequent one line cameos done by celebrities are so apathetically subdued that one cannot help but think most of these people are phoning in a favor to an old Hollywood friend, with absolutely no intention on getting any attention in this project; who can blame them? Even at 80 minutes, relying on a low grade stash of penguin stock footage in order to manipulate a crude plot into this joke must have sounded drastically unappealing to most participants.

Thankfully a few of Saget's crew actually rise to the occasion, that is to say that they do not let their hubris get in the way of embracing the full-on stupidity of the project. It is in those low-fi moments of tasteless class that a few voice actors and the rancid production actually get to shine in it's context. Samuel L. Jackson, as the narrator was an excellent choice, although even his central dialog feels like his head is somewhere else (to the scripts credit, they actually throw in a joke to echo this sentiment). The only other voice actors that make an earnest contribution to this goof are Lewis Black (who thankfully had a large role) and Tracey Morgan, making all other voice actors seem completely indifferent. For the few genuinely hilarious moments that reached further then this trite March of the Penguins farce, I am unexpectedly happy for, but for a majority of screen time, viewers need either be indulging their chemical dependencies, or mocking aloud with friends in order to receive anything special out of this shell of a movie.

Bob Saget makes a foul mouthed send up of the March of the Penguins. Having enlisted dozens of actors and comedians to provide voices, Saget has cobbled together a spoof of the award winning documentary March of the Penguins. Its penguins going on about sex and food and relationship and sex and bodily functions and sex with the bluest of blue language (so keep the kiddies away).

How is it? More often than not this is very funny. The comedians provide lots of laughs in what are mostly asides to the man story of penguins going off to mate. Many of the jokes are the sort of one liners that can be used in other circumstances and there's a good chance that the film will end up being endlessly quoted.

The trouble comes when the movie doesn't end after twenty minutes. Lets face it, as funny as the movie is, after twenty minutes you're ready to turn it off and go on to something else. Don't get me wrong the one liners continue to be funny all the way through but with out any real "plot" other than the mating cycle of the penguins the film becomes just a series of unconnected jokes, which is fun for a while but ultimately just becomes boring. I'm not sure I'd watch it a second time.

Worth a rental with friends, but not worth buying.

I love Bob Saget, and many of the other comedians that starred in this thing. But I can't for the life of me understand why any of them agreed to do it. I've seen Saget's standup, and I think he's very talented. But it does NOT translate well to a movie.

When the dialogue wasn't raunchy, it was incredibly trite, which offended me even more than the lewd humor.

For starters, Samuel L. Jackson belongs in something either a) intelligent or b) badass. This film was neither. And furthermore, I've actually lost some respect for Lewis Black due to his involvement in "Farce." What a stupid title, too. Way too obvious.

And why would you make fun of "March of the Penguins?" It's completely uncontroversial and didn't make a big enough splash in pop culture to be a worthy target of parody, so I guess they figured they had no choice but to make the penguins use the F-word.

Of course, the crappy paste-up job with the footage didn't help this film, either.

I'm not easily offended by off-color humor, but I am offended by respectable comedians reading VERY un-funny dialogue. What a shame.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

A made for video spoof of March of the Penguins, with Samuel L Jackson taking over narrating duties with a much sharper tone, a much sassier attitude and a much fouler mouth!

Some recent spoofs that have hit the cinemas, including Epic Movie and Date Movie, have been rather below par, so I thought there might be some hope with this video spoof of 2005's renowned documentary March of the Penguins. It looked inspired enough, right down to Jackson doing the voice-over, his harsh, commanding voice in contrast to Morgan Freeman's soft, gentle delivery in the proper film. But, really, that's all that is funny, the concept of the film. Or rather, how ridiculous the idea of talking penguins is. Not just talking penguins, farting penguins, penguins that get into arguments with the narrator, penguins that swear and talk like they're from Da Getto, and penguins that, well, make idiots of themselves. The material is sadly just not funny enough to rise it above the absurdity of the story, but there are, to be fair, worser spoofs out there at the moment and considering how cheaply it's all been put together (one penguin even jokes about hating appearing in this "stock footage filled piece of crap!") that's actually quite an achievement. **