A Farsa dos Pingüins

We tried watching this but could only handle about 20mins. We didn't laugh once, it simply was not funny. Could have been if it was animated but it was just poorly edited footage of penguins with celebrity voice overs that didn't fit. I give it a zero out of ten because it simply isn't a movie, it has no plot but that is not just it, it has nothing. I am usually pretty generous and have never before given a zero.

Save you time and let this one go by.

EDIT: I thought I summed it up as best I could but for some reason there is a requirement for ten lines of text. What to say that I haven't already said... I am really surprised that the celebrities would read the script and see the concept and still take part in this. I can't imagine this had any budget but considering it is just using stock footage of penguins, probably from the March of the Penguins movie, there was literally no production costs, so maybe there is where they had the money to pay the voice-overs.

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.

For a documentary with no notoriety fueled by a very political filmmaker, March of the Penguins did very well for itself when it was released last year. It made quite a hefty bit of money, and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary. But for all the quiet moments not featuring the voice of Morgan Freeman (who can narrate my life story anytime he wants to), I think most people would be hard-pressed not to be imagining what the penguins are actually thinking. So it should be no surprise to anyone that Bob Saget, everyone's favourite '90s TV personality, took this idea and ran with it. And what resulted was Farce of the Penguins.

Saget takes the basic premise from March of the Emperor penguins arduous journey to procreate, and created a whole storyline and dialogue to go along with it. The film, narrated this time by Samuel L. Jackson, follows the story of Carl (Saget) and Jimmy (Lewis Black), two friends making the journey with all the other male penguins to find love and make a baby. Jimmy is content with life the way it is, but Carl is going through somewhat of a mid-life crisis. He wants to find a woman he can stay with, but cannot face the inherent contradiction involved in the life cycle of penguins and their mating rites. It frequently pans off to the wait the female penguins are doing, and how nervous Melissa (Christina Applegate) is over the prospect of having a baby with someone she barely knows. Her friend Vicky (Mo'Nique) tries to console her, and attempts to stick by her side during the long wait.

It does not sound incredibly complicated, and in the end, it really is pretty straight-forward. Through digital manipulation and stock footage of various penguins (and all sorts of other wacky animals too), Saget has helped create something wildly irrelevant, but downright hilarious in many instances. Yes, it is incredibly vulgar, and yes, it is even more so ridiculously silly than anything. But does that make the movie any less fun? Slightly, but not by a whole lot. Granted you can take the stupid humour Saget is pitching, than you should be able to find quite a few moments of laughter throughout the proceedings. It gets a little repetitive in certain instances, but there are some really terrifically funny moments sprinkled throughout its way-too-short runtime to help make up for this.

The main voice talent is not amazing, but they get the job done. Saget and Black feed off of each other nicely for the majority of the film, playing jokes off of each other fast and furiously. At certain points however, they really do not seem like they work as well chemically as they did only minutes before. It makes for plenty of awkward transitions, and really unbalances the film. On the other hand, Applegate and Mo'Nique just sound terribly bored. They make a few funny jokes here and there, but sound stiff when they any sort of lengthy conversations. No one was holding them at gunpoint, so I do not understand why they could not have put at least a bit more enthusiasm into their voices.

What actually makes for most of the funny material in the film are the wildly outrageous cameo voices. There are far too many to name off, but making an attempt at trying to figure out whose voice belongs to who is a challenging activity all in itself. Once the end credits come up, you just may be a bit surprised at just who turns up (such as the pseudo Full House reunion). The movie parodies and random musical numbers featuring Saget belting out some pretty heart-warming tunes, is also pretty enjoyable. And of course, Jackson's brilliant narration is simply hysterical.

Unfortunately for this film, the main problem with the film is that it does not have enough steam to make it from beginning to end. Towards the opening, the whole digital manipulation and vulgar jokes are alright, and are pretty enjoyable to watch. But by the end, it just becomes an eyesore. I realize that the joke(s) can only go so far, but Saget had to anticipate this fact, and should have done more to try and resolve it. As a whole, it just feels way too weak to work as a full-length movie, and easily explains why the film is going straight-to-video this January. It could have easily done with a good polish, and a little bit more going for it. By the end, we are just waiting for the film to finish so we can turn it off, and that is not a good thing at all.

I do contest that I laughed pretty hard at more than a handful of scenes, and I would be lying if I did not say that I did enjoy Farce of the Penguins. It is not for everyone, and easily may be written off as being far too stupid to watch, but it definitely is worthwhile. If for anything, as a companion piece to March, just so more people have creative ideas as to what these penguins are thinking.

6/10.

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. **

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.