Spun off from the ever-popular humor website of fake news, The Onion Movie isn’t as bad as its five-year sit on the shelf would suggest. It’s just that with a couple of producers behind Airplane! and The Naked Gun series involved, you’d expect something funnier. Although unceremoniously dumped to DVD, it has its moments — enough to warrant a watch.

Using the Onion News Network as a loose wraparound, the sketch-filled satire has old-guard anchor Norm Archer (Len Cariou, 1408) deliver quick headlines and introduce on-the-scene reports. Some are so stupid in concept, you wonder how they survived the first draft, like neck belts in cars. Others are so dead-on, you wonder if they might not be seen as humor by half the viewing audience, such as a child’s accidental fatal shooting of himself being dubbed as an exercise of the Second Amendment, “hailed by gun-rights activists as a victory for America and the Constitution.”

Popping in here and there are a few repeat characters, most notably Melissa Cherry (sexy Sarah McElligott), a Britney Spears-esque pop tart who denies any sexual content in her songs, even when the videos for them feature such acts as her being taken doggy-style by a giant blue teddy bear. Steven Seagal plays himself in a faux trailer for the actioner Cockpuncher — his catchphrase: “I don’t think you have the balls” — and other cameos include Michael Bolton, Rodney Dangerfield and Meredith Baxter Birney, the latter cooking cats.

As with granddaddy Kentucky Fried Movie, the scattershot Onion Movie zooms through bits so fast, at least you can’t get bored: a terrorist training video, an ad for a celebrity roast, a film-review TV show that critiques The Onion Movie in progress, a commercial for a gay cruise, a show called Little-Known Racial Stereotypes (“Did you know blacks love taffy?”) and a group of friends who tire of playing a murder-mystery game, so they instead host a role-playing rape. Hey, I never said they were in good taste.

Something truly tasteless would open with … oh, say, a nun drinking from a jar labeled “APE CUM.” That’s saved until the end. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

In the 1980s, we as a nation did some crazy things. We grooved to Toto. We bought “Baby on Board” signs. And we allowed the phrase “a Topps Chewing Gum Production” to appear on theater screens. I blame all the cocaine.

Until Tim Burton unleashed Mars Attacks!, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was the only film in cinema history based on trading cards. Rather than use a slew of the Cabbage Patch Kids parodic and puerile characters, this PG-rated adaptation hand-picked seven: Valerie Vomit, Windy Winston, Foul Phil, Nat Nerd, Messy Tessy, Ali Gator and Greaser Greg — respectively known for barfing, farting, pants-pooping, pants-peeing, snotting, eating toes and possessing a switchblade. They’re all played by little-people actors in bizarre costumes with minimal facial movement, rendering them more nightmarish than intended.

The Garbage Pail Kids live in a trash can carelessly contained within the detritus of Manzini’s Antiques, owned by the flamboyant, suspiciously single Cap’n Manzini (Anthony Newley, Doctor Dolittle). His lone employee is the 14-year-old apparently homeless orphan named Dodger (Mackenzie Astin, TV’s The Facts of Life), whose in-store scuffle with bullies accidentally lets the brats out of the can. Although Windy Winston greets Dodger by farting in his face, the boy becomes fast friends with the lot, yet pines for a frizzy-haired skank named Tangerine (telenovela actress Katie Barberi).

While helping Dodger nail Tangerine’s attention and affection through the power of trashy fashion, the Garbage Pail Kids are more interested in making mayhem. To wit, they steal a soda truck (“We’re the Pepsi generation!” exclaims Valerie), sneak into a movie theater to see Stoogemania (shown in clips to pad the running time and grant comparative sophistication), crash The Toughest Bar in the World (where Winston lets loose a toot so noxious, it removes the mustache from the bartender’s face), and watch Dodger bathe (but let’s not get into that).

Director/co-writer Rod Amateau (you can’t spell “amateur” without him!) made a legendarily bad film here, but it’s watchable in group jaw-dropping sections of mockery. For a movie made for children, it possesses several scenes of questionable taste, like having the Garbage Pail Kids rip off models’ dresses at Tangerine’s climactic fashion show. What’s worse: That the movie has its titular things sing an original song about teamwork or that Astin spends the third act in a little Chippendale’s bow tie? —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.