Macgruber (2010) 1.5/5 Stars
Starring Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe, Val Kilmer, Maya Rudolph, and Powers Boothe
Directed by Jorma Taccone
Screenplay by Will Forte, Jorma Taccone, and John Solomon
Produced by Lorne Michaels and John Goldwyn
Note: This review will have colorful language and minor spoiler alert.
Courtesy of Universal Pictures
Saturday Night Live has a history of making bad continuations of hit sketches, besides Wayne's World and Blues Brothers. Can MacGruber be a part of this exclusive club with Wayne's World and Blues Brothers? Unfortunately, the answer is a big hell no. I thought that seeing your favorite character from your favorite tv show in a movie would be better than seeing that character in a 3-5 minute sketch, but I was wrong.
MacGruber is a parody of the 1980's action show MacGyver based on the 2000s SNL sketch MacGruber. It features MacGruber (Forte) being unable to defuse the bomb from the distractions of issues, Vicki Gloria St. Elmo (Wiig), Casey Janine Fitzpatrick (Rudolph), or the week's host. In MacGruber, Colonel Jim Faith (Boothe) assigns MacGruber to stop Dieter Von Cunth (Kilmer) with the help from Vicki and Lieutenant Dixon Piper (Phillippe)
MacGruber is a funny but crazy psychotic lunatic. MacGruber will do crazy shit, such as putting celery between your legs. MacGruber doesn't understand anything about life besides living life. He is so self-centered that he doesn't even know what the word "simplicity" means when he is running from Cunth. At times in MacGruber, MacGruber thinks of his dead wife, Casey, as he even ghost-fucks his dead wife at a cemetery. You can live or die by liking and trusting this iteration of a good SNL character. Even though the character is worse on the big screen than on the small screen, Will Forte carries a vile of goodness in making the man who made MacGruber.
Dieter Von Cunth was the man who killed Casey. Dieter is not pitiful and has no sympathy for MacGruber, even though they were college buddies. Val Kilmer makes an incredible comeback in this film in his best since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Val is great at bringing in the right tone for his character, and Von Cunth is more serious than MacGruber. Again, Kristen Wiig can translate her character from the small to the big screen.
Ryan Phillippe is typecasted as someone working for the force of authority in the U.S. as he played them previously in Crash, Flags of Our Father, Breach, etc. However, those roles he had are poetic and have essential views on life compared to being a lunatic's sidekick. The difference among his other parts in those similar occupations is that he is supposed to be funny. Instead of being earnest and a fan of the main character, this is not a role for Ryan and overcomes it by outspeaking MacGruber on his bat-shit crazy methods.
MacGruber makes action sequences and explosions into a cheesy action comedy that is bad at making one-liners. The only good action scene is when MacGruber accidentally kills his crew consisting of wrestlers Mark Henry, The Great Khali, Chris Jericho, and Kane. Unfortunately, that was the only time the film connected the potential missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle before the rest of the movie rumbles the once-was-completed mystery. MacGruber may be unfaithful to its source material, but it's only faithful to one of the many bad explosions featured in the film. The writing is terrible, and it's dumb to have MacGruber having sex with his ghost-wife and then showing he is jerking off at her tombstone, but it's better than MacGruber being a necrophile.
I was hoping that the more time that we see MacGruber, it will be more fun and some charm. Unfortunately, the more we see MacGruber, he isn't funny and becomes an annoying human. The film's less than average runtime of 100 minutes doesn't include development. The film's character development and plot don't develop either. The story doesn't have an arc. It is just a revenge movie with cliches and plot elements used from other films, especially hiring a group to defeat the person that ruined his reputation.
This film had a budget of only $10 million. I am impressed that pyrotechnic explosions were in a $10 million budget film. On the other hand, the film seems like it could have a $20 million budget. Either way, this film would be a box-office bomb. A box-office bomb to have bombs and explosions. Today, movies with an explosion can cost $2.5 million, or even $1 million, if you use a green screen in the background of your explosion and make it digitally.
MacGruber is still a part of the bad SNL movies because they make the jokes, primarily cruder than on SNL. You can't have a fully developed film just through the gags. There has to be some action and climax to make a movie good, as in The Blues Brothers and Wayne's World. A fully developed film should also feature multiple memorable moments and multiple quotes. Unfortunately, there is only one memorable quote and one memorable moment in the bad SNL films like MacGruber. As in MacGruber, the only special quote is "Let's pound some Cunth," and the only memorable moment is the deaths of MacGruber's first team.
MacGruber is a film with good use of visual effects and sound editing for a comedy but lacks narrative coherence. A tremendous or fulfilling comedy will not necessarily have a theme but a motif or symbol. For example, in Pineapple Express, weed is a motif, if you think about it, as it was the one thing that affects the plot of Pineapple Express. Another example, in the classic Adam's Rib, women's rights are a symbol because it motivates the characters' goals in Adam's Rib. But, as in this case, MacGruber doesn't even have a theme, motif, or symbol.
Don't worry. Once you see MacGruber, you will forget that you have seen this movie and move on by watching better, vulgar comedies. MacGruber features bad, dirty jokes, while the better, vulgar comedies have a lot of better marks. There are even better action comedies to watch, for crying out loud. MacGruber is a pain in the ass to watch, but you will just have to live or die with MacGruber.