Critic Reviews

It’s antagonistic comedy that’s brilliantly designed so that nobody actually gets hurt.

“Between Two Ferns” is filled with hilarious alternate-universe moments.

Between Two Ferns meanders; it invents often-pointless conflicts between its characters; it sometimes feels like a film casting around desperately for an emotional hook to rest itself upon.... It’s also deeply funny, surrounding a talented comedian with other talented comedians and letting them riff off of each other for a feature’s worth of length.

Galifianakis delivers a reminder of just what makes his brand of comedy so unique, special, and even a little daring.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie does its best to coat Zach Galifianakis' dense and dopey TV host with a larger story but, in the end, the best parts are still when it's just him glassily staring into the eyes of a movie star and telling them how much they suck at acting.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie is too much Between Two Ferns to fit into an episode but not enough movie for a sit-down-in-the-theater experience. Still, it’s companionable in the lowered-stakes world of Netflix films where pleasantness and a handful of highlights seem to matter as much as excellence.

It’s not much of a “Movie,” but the bottom line is that Galifianakis, the interviews and those being subjected to them are still funny. Enjoy a beverage while watching and you’ll be doing your own spit takes.

Perhaps the film’s overwhelming ace is an overarching awareness of just how pointless it really is, made with the same disposability with which it should be consumed.

Despite being an alt-comedy Funny or Die production — far from the mainstream ethos of TV's 45-year-old sketch comedy king — Netflix's Between Two Ferns: The Movie is a modern-day SNL flick.

Like some of the feature-length spinoffs of old “Saturday Night Live” sketches that proliferated in the ’90s, it feels like a padded version of a bit that was a lot sharper in five-minute increments.