MacGruber (2010)

At one point in MacGruber, the film’s eponymous one-time Green Beret, Navy Seal, and Army Ranger concocts a completely ineffectual hand grenade using the contents of a trashcan. It’s an unwittingly apt metaphor for this garbage humor-fueled film.

The start of the 88-minute big-screen extension of the running Saturday Night Live sketch finds MacGruber (Will Forte) hiding out Rambo-style in an Ecuadorian monastery. His old boss, Colonel James Faith (Powers Booth) and the plucky young Lieutenant Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) have come seeking the retired hero’s help. His arch-nemesis and wife-murderer Dieter von Cunth (Val Kilmer) has gotten hold of a nuclear weapon. MacGruber must jump into action and assemble his old team to save the world.

When said team (a collection of WWE all-stars, including Chris Jericho, Kane, and The Big Show) blows up in a stupid, less humorous variation on Zoolander’s model demise, MacGruber must make do with Piper, love interest Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and, of course, homemade explosives.

That’s about the size of it. The short-on-story film, as penned by Forte and SNL writers John Solomon and Jorma Taccone, is intended as a send up of long-running TV action hero MacGyver (incidentally, my late grandmother’s favorite show ever). MacGruber’s unattractive dirty-blonde mullet emphasizes that point.

The writers fill in the rest of the blanks with foul mouths and gay jokes. For starters, the villain’s last name comes complete with a silent “h”. Naturally, all of the characters relish repeating it as often as possible, like a bunch of 11-year-old boys who’ve just realized the word play possibilities in the word “dic-tator.”

But, given MacGruber’s well-deserved R rating, it’s not 11-year-olds who’ll make up the bulk of its audience. Why then do most of the movie’s jokes consist of men putting green veggies in their bums and making offers to perform fellatio? The latter of these would have been funnier if it had taken the opportunity to seize on a similar offer made in New Jack City…but it’s been years since Chris Rock had anything to do with SNL. Good for him.

It’s really a shame that this movie spends so much time in the gutter, since some of its funniest moments are its cleanest. In one example, MacGruber develops an unhealthy fixation on a driver who cuts him off, penning a totally off-balanced illustrated manifesto around his license plate number. Both the look on Dixon’s face upon discovering it and MacGruber’s ultimate revenge on the driver are over-the-top and freaking hilarious.

Also in the category of clean but clever is the film’s soundtrack. It’s fitting since MacGruber’s obsession with his removable car stereo also runs throughout the film. Michael Bolton’s “Love is a Wonderful Thing” is a funny, random inclusion and Wiig and Forte team up for a ridiculous late-80s style ballad over the film’s credits.

Taccone, who also serves as the film’s director, does a serviceable job holding it together with decent production values. Admittedly, it doesn’t take much to look more polished than a live sketch comedy show. But when stuff does finally blow up, it looks good enough. Unfortunately, I spent most of the movie trying to sort out its bizarrely anachronistic costume choices. It’s set in the present, but MacGruber’s wardrobe is decidedly stuck in the 1980s, even though his heyday was just 10 years ago. Meanwhile Vicki’s feathered flip and bell bottoms are straight out of the 1970s. Is it too much to ask Taccone to pick a decade and stick to it?

Certainly, MacGruber is funnier than at least half of the other movies born from SNL sketches over the years. (How hard is it to beat A Night at the Roxbury and Stuart Saves His Family, really?) Still, when compared to other recent raunchy big-screen thrill rides, it feels like one of the main character’s ad hoc devices–made mostly from junk and only occasionally effective.

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