The Brewhaha on..."MacGruber"

"MacGruber...  (He finally made a fucking movie...)  MacGruber!"
-The opening sequence

"Anyway, shortly thereafter, she left him for me. She was actually carrying his child at the time. I asked her to terminate it, obviously, so we could start fresh. And she agreed. We were so in love. And he took that from me."
-MacGruber, explaining why exactly his wife is dead

"It’s consistently funny and it didn’t need gray tape to do it. It’s funny in the old Airplane humor, mixed with a little Mel Brooks, type of way; a rare treat, really. Rude, crude, and retarded in our current sophomoric loving comedy movie ways, the film loses nothing from the skit, but successfully adds to it.  [...] There was actually room for them to play along with MacGruber for 88 minutes."
-Jon Peters, KillerFilm.com

"Aesthetically, the movie is a crime; comedically it resorts to knee-slappers like celery up the butt (not once but twice). It’s further proof, as if any were needed, of SNL producer Lorne Michaels’ contempt for the audience."
-Rob Gonsalves, EFilmCritic.com


So goes the hype (and criticism) for "MacGruber," the action movie parody starring Will Forte, the latest successor to a long line of Saturday Night Live movies, and an homage to 80's action films.

As someone with a particular fondness for action films, I happen to appreciate the humor in this movie.  The aloof main character, his disposable love interests, the slimy villains, the over-the-top gun fights, and even an 80's rock theme playing in the background, make me feel so very much at home.  So yes, I suppose you could say I'm incredibly biased in favor of this movie.  Really, really biased...

The title character made his debut as a recurring character on Saturday Night Live.  He would appear in sketches such as the one I'm hoping to find online and embed below, with him and one or two other characters trapped in a room with a bomb slowly ticking down.  The source material of these sketches happen to be the old MacGyver series, as Will Forte's straw-haired hero scrambles to "MacGyver" his way out of their predicament while trying to stay politically-correct, debating the applications of pubic hair, and fighting the urge to strangle Betty White (who appeared in a sketch as his mother).



Is this a good premise for a movie?  Well, someone in charge evidently liked what they saw, and MacGruber was able to make the jump to the big screen.  And when I say "able," I mean this all-American hero was ready, willing, and able.

For those of you who have seen the recent "A-Team" movie, I'll say that both movies have a similar strength; while they're both based on TV shows at least a few decades old, they both also make an effort to update their basic premise for 2010.  The A-Team was more-or-less a straight-up action movie, while MacGruber is a movie adaptation of a sketch show parody based on MacGyver--like a parody of a parody, one could say.

Another of this film's strengths is what I like to refer to as its sheer laugh ratio.  The fact of the matter is that there simply isn't a dull moment; if one joke fails, they simply move on to the next one.  This movie is a virtual onslaught of jokes, much in the same way that...oh, God, I hate to even talk about this movie in the same sentence as "Airplane!"  But I watched this movie (the unrated DVD) with a buddy of mine who is probably even more of a movie buff than I've been pretending to be, and he could not stop laughing.  This is the same guy who introduced me to "Casablanca" and "Monty Python:  The Search for the Holy Grail."  And he could not stop laughing.  Twenty minutes in, he was running out of breath.

Some minor faults can be found in MacGruber's use of cheap, crude laughs.  For those of you who like that sort of humor, though, and for those of you who have only seen the theatrical version, you might not even mind.  The sex scenes are played for all the laughs you can generate from a sex scene, and even the...uh, "celery" scenes are few and far between, enough so that they're subdued (well, as subdued as prancing around with celery between your legs can be).

Character development is tangential to the movie at best, with MacGruber himself playing the idiot hero to nearly everyone else's straight man.  Still, the comic atmosphere doesn't totally detract from the plot; the film hits what you might call the "beats" of your average action movie.  The hero comes back from retirement, gets his team together, faces off with the bad guy, kicks some ass, gets the girl, and ultimately learns a few things about himself.

Ultimately, your opinion of this movie depends on how aggravating you find the lead character.  His antics, which even for a comedy can border on sociopathy, can get old after a while.  His brand of incompetent action hero may be fine in the small, sixty-second doses from which he came, but you can't really expect someone so in over his head to carry a whole movie.  The fact of the matter is that most of the humor is dependent on the lead character himself; whether or not he accomplishes this task is...well, there's a reason we have movie critics...

So overall, is "MacGruber" a good movie?  Yes, it is.  Is it a great movie?  Yes, yes it is.  In fact, I would dare call it the "Citizen Kane" of Saturday Night Live movies based off of 80's action movies.  Yes, it's that good.

Note:  The Brewksy...(an enthusiastic reviewer and blogger)...The Brewsky...(eating cans of whoop-ass for breakfast!)...The Brewsky...(he's been banned in 26 states and Hawaii!)...THE BREWSKY!!!