MacGruber
I don't remember the last time a piece of dialogue described its own movie so perfectly. This is an excruciatingly painful comedy (in theory, not in execution) where comic actor Will Forte gets a chance to bring his MacGruber character from Saturday Night Live to the big screen, and then botches it up so perfectly, you'd almost think he and the two people he shares screenplay credit with designed the thing as an endurance test. I may not remember much about this movie months from now (if I'm lucky), but I will remember it as one of the, if not the absolute, worst film of 2010.
The idea behind the character of MacGruber is that he's supposed to be a parody of 80s TV series, MacGyver. The idea behind the movie is that it's supposed to be a parody of all those overblown action movies from the same decade that used to star Willis, Stallone, and Schwarzenegger. It fails on both counts. The gimmick of MacGyver was that he never used guns, and preferred to create clever gadgets out of everyday objects to help get him out of trouble. MacGruber does this I think once or twice, but hardly enough to consider it a parody of the character or the show. As for the elements that are supposed to be spoofing action films, it doesn't do anything that we haven't seen parodied before. And since it can't think of anything new or original to do, it keeps on having its actors do disgusting acts naked. I honestly don't know what I expected to see in a MacGruber movie, but it was not Will Forte dancing around naked, with a piece of celery stuck in his rear end. And yes, he eats the celery in the scene afterward. ("Don't worry, I washed it", he tells his teammates.)
The plot, of course, doesn't matter. It concerns MacGruber, a faded action hero, being called back into action by his old military friend, Col. James Faith (Powers Booth). 10 years ago, MacGruber was about to marry his true love, Casey (Maya Rudolph), only to have her get blown to bits by a bomb planted by his arch nemesis, Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer). And yes, the "h" at the end of the villain's name is silent. (ho, ho) Cunth is back, and he's stolen a nuclear warhead, which he plans to use to blow up Washington D.C. MacGruber is ready to fight his old nemesis, and gathers up the old team who used to fight along side him. The only person from his old team he doesn't bring back is the one who recently came out of the closet, and is now in a gay relationship. (har har, hee hee) With the old team assembled, he's ready to fight, only to wind up accidentally blowing them all up in a bomb blast.
With his team dead, MacGruber is forced to turn to rookie Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) and former flame Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) to help him fight Cunth. What follows are a series of endless and tedious scenes where the same jokes are repeated over and over again. MacGruber will usually do something really brash or stupid (his preferred method of killing people is to rip people's throats out with his bare hands, making sure to leave a trail of bodies in his wake), or he cowardly hides when the bad guys start shooting at him, using his two teammates as human shields. I understand that this is supposed to be the joke, but I did not find MacGruber himself funny in the slightest. His arrogance is not funny, his cowardliness is not funny, and neither is his running gag where he's always carrying his car stereo everywhere he goes, blasting inappropriate 80s power ballads. Maybe the fact that he always has his teammates disguise themselves as him (so they can draw all the fire) could be funny in another movie, but it falls with a deafening thud here.
So does every single gag the movie attempts. That's because it keeps on mistaking shock value for wit. In one scene, the evil Cunth is painting a portrait, using a naked elderly woman with giant breasts sitting in the middle of the room as his model. That's literally where the gag begins and ends. They don't give the woman anything funny to say or do, we're just supposed to laugh at the fact there's a naked old woman in the room. Likewise, there's a scene where MacGruber goes to the cemetery to visit the grave of his dead wife, and he proceeds to strip naked and begin dry humping her tombstone in front of another person. Once again, there's no real reason for this, we're just supposed to be delighted at the brashness of the scene. Forte and his fellow writers (all Saturday Night Live veterans) obviously thought they were taking advantage of working with less censorship, but the movie misses the point time and time again.
See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!
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