When The Onion staff left Madison for New York in 2001, there was a sense that movies and TV were supposed to follow.

Well, all these years later, that's finally happened. Sort of — they have a movie that you can only see on your TV.

"The Onion Movie" at last sees the light of day on DVD this week, featuring a collection of sketches in the vein of the popular satirical newspaper and Web site.

Calling this a new release, however, is only sort of accurate. It's a new release of a film that has been sitting on the shelf for about five years. In fact, there's enough dust on it that at least one big actor who makes a cameo has since died.

But does "The Onion Movie" have any life?

A straight-to-DVD release, much less a five-year wait, is usually code for "this movie sucks," so Onion fans in the blogosphere are understandably worried.

Truth is, while it's not going to set the world on fire, it's not bad.

Of course, saying a movie isn't as bad as you thought it might be is damning with faint praise. Indeed, it's a video version of The Onion newspaper — complete with jokes poking fun at pop stars, sci-fi gamers, racial issues, Alzheimer's patients and God. In other words, it's rude and unrated for a reason.

But because it's a movie, it has to have a plot to pull all the sketches together. Anchor Norm Archer reads the headlines of the day while becoming increasingly horrified at the shameless way the network is plugging its corporate parent. The ongoing joke throughout the movie is that the parent company is promoting a martial arts film starring Steven Seagal, featuring a title that can't really be printed in a family newspaper.

Those news blurbs are where "The Onion Movie" hits best. There's basketball player Dashante Jackson, who has "harsh words for the Lord" after missing a game-winning three-pointer.

"Without Him, I would truly have gone to the playoffs," the ticked-off basketball player says.

The news reports are often great, with the same rhythm of the Onion print stories. Even the bland ones usually have a good payoff. The problem comes in the mix of sketch and plot, but it all ties together in the end in an "American Dreamz"-like finale.

The movie was written by longtime Onion editors and writers Robert Siegel and Todd Hanson. Delays, poor audience reaction, loss of studio backing and directors ditching the project were among myriad problems the film reportedly faced.

The delay practically made the film a moot point when the Onion News Network debuted online last year, doing the same kind of video parody that makes up the majority of "The Onion Movie."

Straight to DVD might not have been the plan for "The Onion Movie," but the format is its friend. It's easy to see why this might bore big-screen audiences, but watching it in dribs and drabs on DVD works just fine.

The Onion is made for the short attention span; no one sits and reads the paper out loud for 78 minutes. Well, at least very few people do.

There's no denying the film owes its very soul to "Kentucky Fried Movie," the 1977 cult film that also combined sketches, a vague plot and a martial arts spoof. In fact, David Zucker, one of the UW-Madison grads who created "Kentucky Fried Movie," has a producer credit on "The Onion Movie."

While "Kentucky Fried Movie" was considered ahead of its time, "The Onion Movie" is actually behind its own times. But spoofing real-life news never gets old, and in fact, "The Onion Movie" shows how on target the humor conglomerate really is with this headline from a 2003 issue: "DVD Contains 87 Minutes of Previously Unseen Movie."

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The following trailer contains scenes of sexual imagery and may not be suitable for younger viewers.