MacGruber (2010)

Spoilers. But do you really care?

The fact that Will Forte, John Solomon, and director Jorma Taccone took a one-joke sketch from SNL and turned into a feature-length movie that is only half-bad is admirable. The original sketch spoofed MacGyver, a show I'm not terribly familiar with, and locked Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, and a random guest star in a non-descript location while the threat of a bomb going off was imminent (Wiig's only duty was to remind MacGruber of the countdown). The sketches are all about a minute long, are pretty funny, and always end with the bomb exploding and everyone dying.

Val Kilmer plays the villain of the film, Dieter von Cunth, and once you hear that name you can pretty much telegraph the trajectory of the rest of the picture. The film is filled with wall-to-wall raunch, some of it funny, most of it not. MacGruber is called into action when Dieter steals some missile, and he rounds up his old team of "Killer-Stoppers," which mainly consist of WWE wrestlers. Their fate is one of the movie's inspired moments, and forces MacGruber to recruit the much-less-80s Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe), and his old flame's friend, Vicki (Kristen Wiig, in the same role as the show).

The movie gets some mileage out of the joke that MacGruber's accomplishments are a bit exaggerated. He attempts to make a homemade grenade, which fails to work, and refuses to use guns only because "He never learned how." When he does finally fire a semi-automatic, he does so with glee, and wonders why he always bothered with those intricate gadgets in the first place.

But besides being a buffoon, MacGruber is also somewhat of a psychotic, disturbed man. A fellow driver insults his ride, and MacGruber memorizes the license plate of the offending vehicle. He even writes the plate down over and over in a steno book, and whether the audience is supposed to find this funny or disturbing is a bit of a mystery, though I assume it was supposed to be comedic. It was a bit more disturbing to me. When Mac finally finds the car, he burns it, and I guess we're supposed to feel good for him, but I didn't.

The origins of Dieter and Grubs' rivalry is also a tad more disturbing then you would expect. They were all friends in college, when MacGruber stole the woman Dieter was in love with and talked her into having an abortion (the apple of their eyes is Maya Rudolph), so Dieter retaliates by blowing up Maya Rudolph and their wedding. It's a backwards story, and I admire the filmmakers somewhat for making MacGruber not totally relatable, but he's still one messed-up guy.

But the movie's jokes are also hit-and-miss: MacGruber's technique of running around naked with celery sticking out his butt to distract guards is amusing, but not funny or worth repeating. And the sex scene between MacGruber and Vicki and then later the ghost of his dead wife are more annoying then funny (he makes love while hee-hawing), or the joke would be funny if it weren't played out so long.

But I also don't think the movie embraces its ridiculousness enough, and instead feels like its being restrained by its action-comedy quota. Wayne's World and The Blues Brothers are two terrific comedies that totally embrace absurdity, but also give us characters we more or less love, despite the fact that they're not really honorable. MacGruber isn't lovable, and instead can't seem to fully explore the realm of the absurd.

Part of the reason this movie flounders is that it feels like these men haven't grown-up at all. Immaturity is fine, but the script feels like it was written by a 13-year-old, though I firmly believe it was written by the 13-year-old spirits of the men who loved the 80s action movies they are spoofing, just injecting it with things their inner 13 would have found hilarious. That's fine, except this movie is rated R, and is a hard R, so adults will mostly come to see this (and frankly, 13-year-olds probably shouldn't. 14 is ok). Most of them will leave disappointed, but the few whose 13-year-old spirit still lives on in them will love it. I guess that means mine is dead.