MacGruber

MacGruber

By rights, MacGruber should be an unwatchable mess.

Based on a series of Saturday Night Live sketches, it's a straightforward parody of the original MacGyver TV show that largely relies on silly names and poop jokes. This should have made it straight to comedy hell.

And yet somehow all those childish jokes and pratfalls work, largely  thanks to the straight-faced performances of its experienced cast. True,  MacGruber will never be considered a comedy classic - but in a below-par year it's a refreshing blast of funny.

The plot is as ridiculous as you'd expect, although thankfully it doesn't stay still long enough for the cracks to show. MacGruber is as fast-paced as it is puerile, and this burst of speed undoubtedly works to its advantage.

Villain Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer) has stolen a nuclear missile while it was being transported through Siberia, and Colonel Jim Faith (Powers Boothe)  has no option but to call upon an old friend. He tracks down MacGruber -  an extra-special, but unbearably cocky, retired agent - in a mission in  Ecuador, and manages to persuade him to chase down the missile after  the revelation that Cunth was responsible for the death of MacGruber's  wife.

MacGruber (SNL stalwart Will Forte) assembles a team of crack  commandos, but before their mission gets underway he accidentally kills  them all with homemade explosive. Instead, MacGruber heads after his  arch-enemy with old friend Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and military high-flier Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe).

Of course, there are plenty of 'Cunth' jokes along the way, along with a  whole host of sticky situations that MacGruber tries to solve with a  stick of celery and the occasional paperclip. This is parody at its most  basic, dredging the MacGyver archives - and everything from 007 to The A-Team - for anything that can be turned into a crude poop gag.

So why does MacGruber still deserve our attention? What it has in  its favor is an impressive momentum that drags it swiftly through the  blander moments, ensuring that we never get bored, and the jokes never  get too stale. Even the few repeated punchlines become funny thanks to  the screenplay's explicit acknowledgement of the fact - here, the  repetition becomes the joke.

Wiig and Forte are old hands at holding this kind of slapstick humor  together, too, while Boothe, Phillippe and a gloriously puffed-up Kilmer  play their roles so straight that you can't help laughing at their  exaggerated self-importance. Sometimes the biggest laughs don't have to  come with a gurning comedian attached.

MacGruber still won't win any awards or break any records, but  it's far funnier than most audiences will expect, and funnier even than  the original SNL sketch. You'll never look at celery in the same way, though.

3/5

MacGruber

After a 10 year silence, SNL is back in the theaters with Will Forte’s bomb defusing MacGruber. As soon as I saw the trailer I thought maybe they should have stayed quiet for a few more years- but I will give it a try. Spawned from a Saturday Night Live concept that spoof’s the 80′s MacGyver, MacGruber attempts to take the 3 minute sketch and stretch it out to 2 hours. It’s a pretty painful stretch too. It’s unfortunate considering the original sketches are pretty entertaining and the 80′s was never short on source material.  
MacGruber starts with terrorist Deiter Von Cunth (played by a bloated Val Kilmer) stealing a nuclear missile for nefarious purposes. Out of desperation, the government recruits retired hero MacGruber to recover the missile and save the world. MacGruber assembles a team consisting of Vicky St Elmo (The awkward Kristin Wiig) whom he has a past with and new straight-laced recruit Lt Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe). Together they have to not only prove Cunth’s guilt but recover the missile before it causes an international incident. However, MacGruber’s core problem is not the weapon of mass destruction but something even more serious.

MacGruber worst enemy is poor writing. The script makes a solid attempt at being funny throughout. There are legitimate opportunities every few minutes that could have resulted in hilarity but it just couldn’t capitalize on the moment. About 30% of the time, the humor sparks a chuckle. For the other 70%, you can’t help but think “that joke would have been much funnier if they just said it this way…” written by Will Forte, it’s apparent that it would have been more consistent under a different writer(s). Will, stretching 3 minutes out to 2 hours is harder than it looks right?

Another ‘serious’ problem is a flaw in the basic premise of MacGruber as a hero. MacGruber is supposed to be a highly decorated, world renown, super-special agent for the government. As set up in the beginning, he is the ‘best of the best’ and a national hero. However, during the rest of the movie, he is a complete incompetent bafoon. He’s not only untalented but a liability by killing innocent team mates! What’s even more frustrating is that unlike his MacGyver counter-part, MacGruber does not build a single working device- zero! That IS his schtick right? They could have easily addressed his under-performance with a plot point but instead they just assume we are all idiots. I know you can’t think too deeply about an SNL comedy but I have to draw the line when it insults the intelligence of the audience.

Besides a couple of isolated scenes, MacGruber is a disappointing movie. It’s surprising that SNL chose it for the return to the big screen. If you are a HUGE fan of SNL then you might find it mildly entertaining. If not, watch the SNL 3 minute clips and save yourself 1 hour and 57 minutes.

Read more of my reviews at www.BabbleOn5.com 

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Last updated: 2010-05-27 15:32:03 by tonybkim

"MacGruber" is perfectly stupid

When I first heard about a movie based on the “MacGruber” sketches from “Saturday Night Live,” I was…skeptical. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sketches. The goofy take on an inept, troubled McGyver-type who ends up never saving the day is quite funny, but those sketches are about thirty seconds long. How does a thirty second joke translate into a ninety minute film? Surprisingly, quite well.

MacGruber works as a movie because it’s not just an overlong version of the sketch. The movie is really a parody of 80s action movies like the Rambo sequels. True, this has been done before (Hot Shots! Part Deux comes to mind), but never in such R-rated glory as this.

Yes, MacGruber is a bit dirty (when I saw it, two of the ten people in attendance walked out about thirty minutes in), but it’s all very goofy. There is gore and nudity, but I would call it stupid before I would call it offensive. But back to the parody aspect…

Your enjoyment of MacGruber is largely based on how schooled you are in the glory days of Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Sticking with the schooling theme, I consider myself a professor in the ways of the action heavies. Watching this film, I was reminded of elements of Predator, Cobra, and, well, anything else those two action stars made during that decade. This movie doesn’t necessarily make fun of those movies; it just exaggerates their elements to the point of hilarity. And if you’ve seen those movies, you know that exaggerating them is quite a feat.

So I dug the action references and the gross out stuff was just ridiculous enough to crack me up (though I don’t think I’ll ever look at celery the same way again), but that doesn’t completely make a comedy. The most important factor is the titular MacGruber. Thankfully, the more fleshed out thirty second character is quite funny. First off, he has the amusing look from the skits – mullet, tech vest, flannel – so he’s this walking 80s joke already. Add the character quirk of always having to remove his car’s tape deck (it’s a Blaupunkt!) and carry it around with him and that helps. Throw in the character trait of instantly offering sexual favors when things go wrong and it gets even funnier.

The character is great and Will Forte plays it perfectly. He handles the spoof aspect early on by constantly sporting the Stallone sneer during the first act. Then Forte hams up the screaming to the sky “dramatic” moments. And his smug, self-righteous delivery of idiotic lines is dead on.

The supporting cast works well, too. Kristen Wiig is amusing as MacGruber’s faithful sidekick. Val Kilmer seems to be having fun in the villain role, though the funniest aspect of his character is the dark story behind his rivalry with MacGruber. Powers Boothe channels Richard Crenna in the military leader role. But Ryan Phillippe is the most impressive and that is because he has the most important job in the film: he has to play it serious.

Phillippe plays Lt. Dixon Piper, who is the professional foil to the idiotic MacGruber. Movies like MacGruber, that aim to spoof, are only successful if there is at least one character who is taking everything deadly serious. If you don’t have that serious man, you have Will Forte cracking cheesy one-liners to Wiig for ninety minutes. Now, that would actually be slightly amusing, but it wouldn’t be truly funny. Phillippe is in there to say, “What are you talking about?” His reaction is the audience’s reaction and it makes everything MacGruber says much funnier than it has any right to be.

You may have noticed that I left out a plot summary on this one. That is completely intentional. Obviously, the plot is not important at all for this film. It’s a movie based on skit comedy, so it’s a film of moments, not a film of excellent narrative structure.

Those moments really made the film for me. There’s a strange side-plot in which MacGruber obsesses on getting revenge after being insulted by a passing motorist. He mutters the license plate number (KFBR392) like a mantra at first and it gets taken to the extreme later in the movie. It makes almost no sense but it had me rolling. Another moment would be the team-building montage in which MacGruber recruits a bunch of old mercenary buddies (all of them WWE wrestlers) and seals the deal with what I call the manclasp (a loud, manly clasp of the hands a la Predator). It reeks of the 80s and the result of it all is insanely funny. Oh, one final element that had me laughing…two words: throat ripping.

MacGruber is surprisingly funny and it gives me hope for future SNL movies (although I don’t think this one is going to make enough money to warrant future projects). Looking over this review I noticed that I make a lot of seemingly random references to the film that make almost no sense. I think that’s fitting for MacGruber, a film full of randomness. If some of the examples above just sounded stupid to you, you should skip this. If you find insane stupidity funny, then definitely get out and watch this. MacGruber is just dumb enough to be hilarious.

Eric Harris - www.canneltoncritic.com

Last updated: 2010-05-22 14:57:45 by canneltoncritic

MacGruber

no spoilers whatsoever, so read on…

Last night I was lucky enough to score tix to a special test screening of an unfished cut of MACGRUBER, follow by sort of roundtable audience imput. (I’m praying they don’t change anything for the final cut).  Let me just go ahead and say it: MACGRUBER is the balls-out, most hilarious, comedy event of the season!!  Satan, that was pretty fucking hilarious!!  I’m not kidding, I know I can be sarcastic at times, but I’m dead serious here. It’s about time an SNL skit turned into a movie delivered the goods.  I had my fingers crossed too, because MACGRUBER is one of the few things I actually look forward to when watching SNL.

I really didn’t know what to expect, I mean how were they going to stretch what is essentially a minute long (if any) skit into 90 minutes, but they did it. There’s so much thrown at you, but everything sticks; and so many funny moments that were taken….there and beyond until you were in stitches! The movie is vulgar without being crude.  There’s even a few out-of-nowhere-no-they-didn’t-moments that will have you rolling on the floor.

Will Forte is having a ball and he gives MACGRUBER (his baby) his all and more.  Kristen Wiig, is cute and funny and several times she had a knowingly wink on her eyes, as if she wanted to crack up, but was trying hard to keep a semi-straight face (I can’t wait to see the bloopers on this). Val Kilmer and (of all people) Ryan Phillippe are game, and though I can see why Val Kilmer said yes, I still can’t believe Ryan Phillippe signed up for this. He’s the most oddball casting here, but he does a great, great job as straight man to MACGRUBER’s freak.


The entire audience laughed from the very first minute all the way to the end, and though SNL-related movies don’t usually make much money, MACGRUBER deserves to be a bona fide hit. Richard Dean Anderson and the team behind MacGyver would be proud.  Classic MacGruber! Grade: A

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