MacGruber (2010) *

Directed by:  Jorma Taccone



Starring: Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe,Val Kilmer, Powers Boothe


MacGruber is based on a Saturday Night Live sketch that has been stretched out into feature-length nonsense. Like many movies based on SNL skits, it's jaw-droppingly bad. MacGruber is apparently based on the 80's TV show MacGyver, in which the title character creatively uses ordinary items to create explosions and mayhem while fighting the bad guys.

I never watched MacGyver, but it has a cult following even today.  What I know about it is based on the parodies and potshots of it from The Simpsons.

I have to judge a comedy by whether I laughed enough to have a good time with it.   The plots are usually immaterial to its success. Animal House really didn't have much of a plot, but it was really, really funny.   MacGruber, alas, is not funny at all.   I didn't even crack a smile, let alone laugh at this film which is trying so desperately to draw out laughs.

How desperate? When MacGruber (played by Will Forte) is taken off the mission, he begs for his job back by offering fellatio to his male superiors...over and over.   He even takes his pants down so he could receive anal if need be.   Did the writers think it was funny that a macho agent would reduce himself to begging to commit overtly homosexual acts?    Did they think that offering blowjobs to keep a job is intrinsically funny?   Did they think at all?

And what about the scene in which MacGruber has sex with his longtime friend Vicki (Wiig) and screams that he will "fill her up". He also does this with the ghost of his dead wife and you can imagine that this doesn't work any better.   Oh, and let's not forget the name of his enemy, Dieter Von Cunth (Kilmer), who steals a nuclear missile and threatens to blow up Washington DC with it, just in case you were really wondering what the plot of the movie was. "Cunth" sounds a lot like...well, you know and no it isn't funny when the name is said the first time, fifth time, or fiftieth time.

SNL skits don't really make for good movies. The Ladies Man, Coneheads, and Wayne's World are testaments to this.  Stretching out five minute sketches to feature-length is dicey indeed, especially when you have another 75 minutes or so to fill and the first five aren't that funny to start with.  How MacGruber even got made is baffling to me, but I guess producer Lorne Michaels has enough clout to get junk like this made. I can't imagine how many possibly good films were left unmade because the studio devoted precious budget money to this.

By the way, for fans of the movie Tombstone (I am certainly one), MacGruber represents a reunion of two of the film's stars: Kilmer and Powers Boothe. If they ever appear in another movie together, they would do just as well to forget they appeared together in this one and reminisce about the good old days of Tombstone.