Between Two Ferns: The Movie (2019)

When it was announced only a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to say the least that they were adapting a satirical talk show of the internet into a movie. I've always been a huge fan of the web show and always found the writing and humour to be really witty and funny. The same can not be said for the movie, which was just plain not funny and a complete waste of time unfortunately.

This movie followed every single cliche you could possibly imagine from a Hollywood movie. You know exactly where the film is going the entire time. The main driving force for the story is that they have to go cross country to get 10 between two ferns episodes shot so that Zach can get his own network talk show, so its a roadtrip movie... How fresh. The characters are bad, forgettable and unfunny. There is zero special about the filmmaking. One of the aspects of the movie is it's shot like they are making a documentary about the making of the web show, similar to something like the office, but unlike the office, it has zero value within this movie. It serves no purpose at all and was just another lazy excuse for a few gags. It also is completely inconsistent, the whole movie isnt shot in this documentary style, they make a point of Zach asking the make believe filmmakers to shoot everything, but then there are scenes presented like a normal movie. which begs the question why even bother in the first place?

At one point in this movie, Will Ferrell (Playing the manager of funny or die) says "people like to laugh at Zach, not with him" in reference to what made the show so popular. As if to suggest that is the driving force to what makes the web series so popular, is the fact that Zach is such a goofball. But that's not the appeal at all. The appeal is it's Zach making personal jokes about real stars careers and just plain being rude to them, having Zach shush the president of the United states, telling actors how terrible they are, in one episode he even asked hilary Clinton if email is the best way to reach her. Brilliant. It may be staged but undeniably it's still funny to see these things that you would never see happen in a more traditional interview, the show provided something unique and somewhat daring, and funny. So it's so bizzare to me that the writer and director of this movie (who is the same as the web show) didn't seem to understand the aspects that made the show so popular in the first place. I never saw Zach galifinakis as a character in the original series. More as a spokesperson for these jokes, jokes that people would make between there friends except Zach was directly speaking to them. not the Zach we see in this film, this bumbling goofy idiot type character who has a dream of making it big and becoming a real talk show host, Errm, who cares!!

The best part of this movie is of course the interviews themselves. But even they are not nearly as funny. They just feel more "polished" and some of them are less than a minute long. The movie was also not self aware in the slightest. I think it would have helped this movie along if they got alot more meta, you know have actors play up the way they are perceived by audiences, but they dont. Instead they just chose to go the absolute laziest route possible and have the actors just sit there quietly and take the abuse. The scenes between the interviews could have been filled with birdman like self awareness with actors mocking themselves. Such wasted potential here.

Overall this isn't a movie I can recommend, m

Fmovies: A super thin plot with no real humor. The only scenes worth watching are the celebrity segments and none are as good as the already existing shorts. Gag reel at the end was pretty good. Wait for someone to edit together the good parts into a 10min youtube video. Otherwise skip it if you value your time.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie. That's precisely the title, and you clicked on the thing, so what did y'all expect? A transcendental study of body and mind? Jesus, simply have some fun for once with an innocent little flick like this. Just my opinion. Personally, and it's cool if you disagree of course, this was everything I wanted and even a bit more. I did not think I would laugh pretty much all the way through one bit, but I sure did. You can totally see the fun they had on set and that decidedly benefitted the movie. Even Will Ferrell had a few hilarious lines, and I close to never think he's actually funny. Jake Gyllenhaal got a shout-out that worked so well 'cause of a good Between Two Ferns inside joke. Paul Rudd couldn't even fully pretend to be serious because he was having so much fun. Benedict Cumberbatch. This very solid flick obviously does nothing to reinvent comedy or challenge the arts, but it's so entertaining and does what it needed to do, and I'm sure some jokes will stick with me for a long time. And the bloopers are flawless, by the way.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie fmovies. They were probably hoping to churn out a new Borat type movie, but it resembled more a new Action Point (2019). An excuse to drag a skit out to an 80 minute movie. I gave it almost 15 minutes, but then I started skipping the boring connective tissue between the celebrity interviews. It surely didn't help that this was the third (!) miss on Netflix on the same evening for me.

The end credits though are hilarious, and I guess you can find them on Youtube if you don't have Netflix. Because there is no reason to watch this entire film.

The end credits are the funniest part. If you just skip all the "movie" parts and watch the 2 minute interviews you'll be better off.

Long time fan of the original show online and had high hopes for this after the trailer. The story and some jokes seemed really predictable, but they were still fun nonetheless. The run time of only 75 minutes helps the movie not get boring as it is paced pretty fast. The celebrity interactions are the strongest point imo, but they felt rushed because of the fact that each celebrity was there for like 2 minutes at a time.

Overall, if you are a fan of the show, you should give it a try and see what you think. If you've never seen or dislike the original, then this is definitely not for you.