MacGruber Review

MacGruber (2010)

I was a huge MacGyver fan as a kid and I thoroughly enjoy the MacGruber skits on Saturday Night Live that satirize this great show. Still, a feature length MacGruber movie? I was skeptical. That being said, Will Forte, who plays the character on SNL, is a co-writer. And the film received an R-rating, indicative of a certain level of creative freedom. Both of these were good signs, and as the movie neared release, the reviews were very positive. So I went.

The plot is simple. MacGruber is pulled out of retirement Rambo III-style to assemble a team of super soldiers to stop an evil villain from obtaining and detonating a nuclear warhead in D.C. Of course, things do not go so smoothly, and much has changed since MacGruber was last called on to defend democracy. For one thing, bombs are now built with more than 3 wires.

MacGruber is a movie made by people who clearly cared about what they were doing, and who obviously had a lot of fun making the movie. The movie is consistently funny, although not hilarious, and the characters are surprisingly endearing. Most of the humor is dumb and genital-related, but Will Forte is so likeable that it’s funny anyway. Ryan Philippe is well-cast as the straight-shooting army officer assigned to assist MacGruber. Kirsten Wiig steals the show. She is so funny as MacGruber’s partner, I kind of wish the whole movie had focused on her. Both Powers Booth, as an army general, and Val Kilmer, as the criminal mastermind Dieter von Cunth, are also very good.

There are two gut-busting, hilarious scenes that make the movie highly recommendable. I only wish that there were more of these scenes, because the movie never quite reaches its full potential. The characters save the movie. Every actor has so much fun in his or her own role, that it is hard not to have fun watching them. The movie certainly didn’t deserve the brutal box-office beating it received on opening weekend. MacGruber is fresh and original, and I would much rather see comedies like it than most of the garbage that comes out every month. Why is it that the public always supports the wrong kind of movie?

The final verdict: if you turn on the childish side of your brain, you will have a lot of fun with MacGruber. There are some brilliant bits that make the experience worthwhile. And it has a lot of heart. You get that rare, warm, fuzzy feeling inside that someone actually cared about what you are watching on that big silver screen.