Farce of the Penguins | DVD Review

It takes a special sense of humor to watch a documentary as specific and touching as March of the Penguins and think that it is perfect fodder for a spoof. Enter comedian Bob Saget (clean-cut dad Danny Tanner of TV’s Full House) and the sometimes-funny – if overlong – Farce of the Penguins.

Saget co-produced, wrote, directed, and provides some of the penguins’ voices in this parody, which is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and focuses on two penguins (Saget as Carl and comedian Lewis Black as Jimmy) embarking on their 70-plus mile trek to find mates. Of course this being a product of Bob Saget, the language these penguins use in describing their mission is a lot more crude. They may look like they’re wearing tuxedos, but they are far from classy ‘guys’. March of the Penguins conveyed the love and respect that male penguins have when it comes to their journey to the mating grounds and the entire process of penguin procreation. Farce of the Penguins looks at their intentions with a suspicious eye, positing them as complete horndogs who only get action once a year and are determined to make the most of it. However, Carl is a more sensitive penguin and wants to find a lifelong mate, someone to fall in love with and share everything with. The film jumps back and forth between the male penguins walking and gliding on their bellies toward their goal and the female penguins waiting for them at the mating grounds. This is where we meet Vicky (Mo’Nique, Beerfest, Shadowboxer) and Melissa (Christina Applegate, Anchorman, Employee of the Month). Vicky just wants to find any male penguin to mate with, but Melissa wants something more.

It’s difficult to gauge Bob Saget’s abilities as a director from watching Farce of the Penguins, as even he admits all he had to do was gather a mass of stock penguin footage and write the most offensive dialogue he could come up with to go along with it. What’s impressive, though, is the amount of celebrities he was able to muster up to give voice to the many penguin characters in the film. Apart from the four main characters, standout performances include Tracy Morgan (TV’s Saturday Night Live) as Marcus, a well-endowed penguin befriended by Carl and Jimmy during their trek, and Jonathan Katz (TV’s Dr. Katz animated series) as Carl’s owl psychiatrist. The list of talent is long, even though many of the roles were one-liners. Some of the voices were provided by Abe Vigoda, Jason Alexander, Norm MacDonald, Gilbert Gottfried, Whoopi Goldberg, Harvey Fierstein, Drea de Matteo, Jonathan Silverman, Alyson Hannigan, Jon Lovitz, and most of the cast from Full House: John Stamos, Dave Coulier, Lori Loughlin, and Jodie Sweetin.

The main problem with Farce of the Penguins is that at just under 80 minutes, it’s still too long by half. There really is only so much you can joke about when it comes to penguins and their sexual behaviors, and it gets repetitive very quickly. Which is really too bad, because I happen to like Saget’s brand of humor, only in smaller doses. What stopped me from turning the film off about two thirds of the way through was trying to guess who the voices belonged to. If anything, Saget seems to have had a ton of fun making the film. He doesn’t care what the outcome is, since there was little money spent to make it. It was an opportunity for him to get together with friends and put something together while having a great time, and that’s all that really matters, right?

The picture looks about as good as it can, considering it’s stock penguin footage, and the disc includes quite a few features, some of which hit their mark and others that simply fall flat. The ‘Bonus footage’ is basically five deleted scenes that are available with or without commentary. They’re more of the same of what’s in the movie, and the commentary on these scenes is painful. The feature commentary, though, is a bit better and consists mainly of Saget name-dropping while also acknowledging that he’s name-dropping. He approaches the feature commentary with a self-deprecating wit concerning his directorial duties on a film that really didn’t need any ‘directing’. There’s a fifteen minute ‘on-location’ interview which is just Saget sitting in front of a green screen of Antarctica, talking about making the film and freezing his butt off. Funny stuff, but again, it’s too long. The original content on the menus is hysterical, probably because it is short and sweet. The best part of the features is the behind-the-scenes montage, where we get to see the various actors voicing their parts in the studio.

Farce of the Penguins is another oddball film from indie studio THINKFilm (Half Nelson, The Aristocrats, and In the Shadow of the Moon, winner of this year’s audience award at Sundance), and is in fact very funny, but it didn’t need to be 80 minutes long. Maybe the best way to watch this film is to be loaded, as Carl suggests when introducing the menus.

Movie rating – 2

Disc Rating – 2.5