Sunday, May 23, 2010

MacGruber

Film Review by Kam Williams

Headline: Will Forte Stars in Latest Woeful Adaptation of SNL Skit

MacGruber is a recurring sketch which has been running on Saturday Night Live (SNL) since January of 2007. Each episode is designed as a thinly-veiled spoof of MacGyver, the popular ABC-TV series from the Eighties that revolved around the daring exploits of a resourceful secret agent who’d served in Vietnam as a bomb defusal expert. In the SNL parody, however, Will Forte plays the title character as a butterfingered bungler who invariably gets distracted from his assignment and fails to deactivate the explosive in time to prevent himself and his comrades from being blown to smithereens.

Whoever decided it might be a good idea to try to flesh out this two-minute skit into an hour-and-a-half long feature film, must be the same genius who thought that what the world needed was another SNL-inspired, stretch-o-matic spinoff like such abysmal offerings as The Ladies Man (2000), Superstar (1999), A Night at the Roxbury (1998), Stuart Saves His Family (1995), It’s Pat (1994) and Coneheads (1993). Other than the first two, The Blues Brothers (1980) and Wayne’s World (1992), these ill-advised endeavors have uniformly proven pretty disastrous.

In the case of MacGruber, what we’re dealing with is a particularly-reprehensible, one-trick pony which relies on incessant profanity and crude appeals to baser instincts as its primary brand of humor. For instance, there’s a running joke which gets stale fast in the pronunciation of the villain Dieter Von Cunth’s (Val Kilmer) surname, since the “h” is silent.

This affords MacGruber countless opportunities to spout offensive double entendres on the order of “It’s time to pound some Cunth.” That’s not the only curse word the hapless hero’s fond of either, as the expletive-laced dialogue has him saying everything from, “[Beep] you! [Beep] head!” to “You’re a piece of [Beep]” to “I will [Beep] your [Beep]-ing {Beep]. How did it take a trio of scriptwriters, namely John Solomon, Forte and director Jorma Taccone, to create such unwatchable garbage? They must’ve all been on stupid pills.

Nonetheless, fans of infantile gross-out gags might appreciate being treated to the sight of MacGruber’s pimply posterior as he prances across the screen buck naked with a stalk of celery stuck in his anal cleft for no apparent reason beyond comic relief. From what, I have no idea.

Still, there are the rudiments of plotline to follow for those still considering checking out this insult the intelligence. If you must know, it’s of the formulaic “soldier of fortune coaxed of retirement and reassembles a crack team of commandos in order to save the world from his diabolical nemesis in possession of a nuclear warhead” variety. To the surprise of no one, the film’s fulcrum predictably pivots around whether or not they’ll be able to defuse the missile before the madman has a chance to launch the weapon at the White House.

A “sleazy does it” production that looks like it was improvised on the spot with a lack of conviction by a bunch of 12 year-olds desperate for attention.

Poor (0 stars)
Rated R for violence, profanity, nudity, crude humor and graphic sexuality.
Running time: 88 Minutes
Distributor: Universal Pictures

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