6 1/2 Reasons 'Between Two Ferns: The Movie' Defies The Sketch-Into-Movie Curse
The premise was simple. Clean. Direct. If one were feeling uncharitable, one might even say thin.
In a series of 21 videos posted to Will Ferrell's Funny or Die website, comedian Zach Galifianakis played a version of himself, interviewing celebrities. That was it. Now: It was a pinched version of himself. A bored, distracted, irritable Zach Galifianakis, lobbing questions that were condescending and dismissive at best, and jaw-droppingly insulting at worst.
The celebrities were A-list: Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman, Bradley Cooper, Steve Carell. The setting was distinctly D-minus-list: two chairs, a black background curtain, and two large ferns. Everything about it — the harsh lighting, the static camera, the blocky, frequently misspelled chyrons — was meant to evoke the lawless frontier of public access television, where both Galifianakis and his Between Two Ferns co-creator Scott Aukerman got their starts.
