MacGruber

Movie Information

The Story: An action hero, long thought to be dead, returns to the fray in order to stop an evil mastermind from nuking Washington, D.C. The Lowdown: Eighties kitsch and a parade of juvenile humor traipsing around as innovative offensiveness make for a long, tedious slog.
Score:

Genre: Action/Comedy
Director: Jorma Taccone
Starring: Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe, Val Kilmer, Powers Booth
Rated: R

I can’t remember the last time I actually gave a damn about Saturday Night Live. After watching MacGruber, however, I can now unequivocally say that I’ve joined the ranks of those who want to see SNL on the chopping block. Not because of anything that is actually on the show, but rather because—call me a humanitarian—I don’t want them to ever try foisting something as downright insipid as MacGruber on the general populace again.

The movie is based on a series of SNL sketches that spoof the ‘80s TV series MacGyver. Besides the obvious question of who thought it was pertinent to poke fun at an 18-years-dead TV show, the SNL skits in question only last about 30 seconds. What usually kind of works as a five-minute-long TV segment very rarely works when drawn out over 90 minutes—go dig up a copy of Stuart Saves His Family (1995) if you need an example of how this can go horribly awry. In the case of MacGruber, what is just dumb in 30 seconds becomes an exercise in the most egregious way to blow millions of dollars of studio money, aside from setting it on fire in front of starving children.

Instead of MacGyver, we have MacGruber (Will Forte, The Brothers Solomon). He is essentially the same character with (supposedly) the same ability to thwart evildoers with basic household junk, sporting the same mullet and with a predilection towards khaki. The difference is that MacGruber is an idiotic blowhard. He is your basic movie moron: loud, brash, rude—but now with bonus undercurrents of homophobia and misogyny.

MacGruber’s mission is to stop a criminal mastermind (Val Kilmer) from destroying Washington, D.C., with a stolen warhead.  But the plot isn’t important, just a means of getting from gag to gag—at least in theory. The problem is there is maybe one joke with an actual punch line attached. The best example is Val Kilmer’s character’s name, Dieter Von Cu*th. MacGruber gets as much mileage as possible by repeating his last name. And that’s pretty much it. No bad puns, no real jokes attached to it, just a word that sounds like another word and the hope that the audience’s Pavlovian instincts will kick in.

The entire movie is set up in this way—just a lot of swearing and gross-out gags in an attempt at freaking out the round haircuts, except none of it works because none of it is new. Ryan Phillippe with a celery stalk inserted into his rectum (yes, this happens) isn’t the height of hilarity or offensiveness (though it’s probably pretty symbolic of his career path); it’s just dumb and toothless. At least something like Observe and Report had the wherewithal to be morally repugnant.

The best MacGruber can accomplish is to carry on the long-held tradition of awful Saturday Night Live movies. There was one last bomb MacGruber failed to disarm; unfortunately for everyone, that bomb was this movie. Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, violence, language and some nudity.

SHARE

Before you comment

The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.

10 thoughts on “MacGruber

  1. Steve

    an exercise in the most egregious way to blow millions of dollars of studio money, aside from setting it on fire in front of starving children

    Classic. Love it.

  2. Ken Hanke

    Ah, I see we found a way to Val Kilmer’s character’s name in without sending the website into a frenzy of ####.

  3. Ken Hanke

    So Justin drew the short straw again, huh? Condolences.

    Actually, at the time there was some reason to hope this might be the better of the two mainstream releases. C’est la guerre.

  4. From what I read, if you are a fan of 80s action films from companies like Cannon, the movie is mildly amusing. Mildly. I’m still curious.

  5. Ken Hanke

    I’m still curious

    Great. I see where this is going. You’ll see it and kind of like it as remarkably bad and 10 years from now you’ll run it somewhere on the basis of its God-awfulness and I’ll have to review the damned thing.

  6. Ken Hanke

    So which is better, MacGruber or Deadly Prey?

    Don’t ask me. I didn’t see MacGruber.

  7. DrSerizawa

    This movie locally had the most promotion I’ve seen in years. Realizing that this tends to indicate a real turkey (and not an unintentionally funny turkey but a true dog) and that the studio is trying to get a load of ticket sales before the word of mouth can destroy it, I wisely avoided it last night. Glad to see I was right. Heavy promotion is seldom a good sign.

  8. Ken Hanke

    Heavy promotion is seldom a good sign.

    Always remember that Universal got one look at Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, panicked and immediately dumped an additional 14.5 million 1976 dollars into hyping what looked like — and proved to be — a disaster.

Leave a Reply to Ken Hanke ×

To leave a reply you may Login with your Mountain Xpress account, connect socially or enter your name and e-mail. Your e-mail address will not be published. All fields are required.