Lorne Michaels and his friends at “Saturday Night Live” spent the better part of the 90s adapting popular TV skits into feature-length movies. While it worked pretty well for “Wayne’s World,” movies such as “Coneheads,” “Superstar,” “A Night at the Roxbury” and “It’s Pat” didn’t exactly enthrall the masses.

As most of those movies demonstrate, even the most genius comedy skits can’t be stretched beyond a few minutes without some kind of meaningful narrative. Yet, despite the poor track record, Zack Galifianakis is the latest comedian to attempt the jump with his online celebrity interview series, “Between Two Ferns.”

Over the years, “Between Two Ferns” has stayed fresh despite its simple formula: Galifianakis plays an idiot version of himself who overcompensates his incompetence by insulting his celebrity guests.

Netflix’s “Between Two Ferns: The Movie” begins as a mockumentary of sorts about the making of a typical episode. Galifianakis is himself, just less famous, and he films the show out of a junky local access TV studio. When an on-set accident results in the near-drowning of Matthew McConaughey, the show’s head exec (Will Ferrell as himself, sort of) demands Galifianakis and his crew hit the road to film 10 new episodes in two weeks. In exchange, Ferrell offers Galifianakis a late-night talk show on the Lifetime channel.

The setup is nonsense, of course. Galifianakis and his crew have a few out-of-studio adventures between shooting episodes of “Between Two Ferns” with the likes of Keanu Reeves (MVP of 2019), David Letterman, Paul Rudd, Awkwafina, Brie Larsen and a very, very rich Peter Dinklage.

The “Ferns” segments don’t disappoint, and they occur frequently enough that the “plot interludes” never drag the movie down for long. While it would honestly be better to see all these celeb interviews as a normal package of “Between Two Ferns” episodes, the commitment by Galifianakis and writer/director Scott Ackerman to the experiment is amusing and absurd enough. The end credits are also stacked with some hilarious outtakes.

Netflix at a theater near you

Last year, Netflix gave Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” a significant Oscar push by screening the movie in several theaters across the country. It wasn’t the first time Netflix released one of their movies in theaters, but it was definitely their most publicized, and the movie won three Oscars, including Best Director for Cuaron.

That garbage “Green Book” movie beat “Roma” in the Best Picture category, and so Netflix is going for the jugular this fall by releasing “The Irishman” from director Martin Scorsese. The three-and-a-half hour epic starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci had a glowing debut at the New York Film Festival, with some critics hailing it as a career-capping masterpiece from Scorsese.

Expect Netflix to throw down millions of dollars on the Oscar campaign. Netflix is also trying something new - “The Irishman” will release in select theaters in early November, a few weeks ahead of its debut on the streaming service. The strategy aims to appease Oscar voters who still might scoff at the idea of Netflix as a major film studio.

Netflix will be releasing a few other movies in theaters this season as well, including “El Camino,” the highly anticipated “Breaking Bad” sequel film featuring Aaron Paul. That debuts on Netflix on Oct. 11, and the Magic Lantern theater in Spokane will be screening it on the big screen that weekend as well.

Both of those, at least, are probably worth seeing the ol’ fashioned way.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com. He is the co-host of “Old Millennials Remember Movies,” available anywhere you find podcasts.