I won’t bore you by offering up the long list of horrendous movies based on Saturday Night Live sketches.
I will simply tell you that the newest SNL sketch-cum-movie adventure, MacGruber, isn’t nearly as bad as It’s Pat, but doesn’t quite reach the comedic heights of Wayne’s World.
Will Forte’s MacGruber has become a staple of the current SNL lineup. In every short bit, he’s faced with having to diffuse a bomb in some random “control room.” But his vanity, ego, racism, homophobia and pride always get him, and his team, killed. Like many SNL characters before him, MacGruber is getting the big-screen treatment, and the results are mixed to disappointing.
This MacGruber is a true American hero, with a mind-boggling list of accolades and awards. After the untimely death of his new bride, MacGruber has retreated to a monastery, leaving his previous life of heroics behind. But when his nemesis Dieter Von Cunth (played ridiculously by Val Kilmer) steals a nuclear warhead, the military calls on Mac to save us all. Joining him on this mission are Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillipe) and his feathered-do-sporting love interest Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig).
What works in MacGruber is the occasionally hilarious sending up of the 1980s action movie cliché. The exchanges between Forte and Powers Boothe, as Colonel Faith, echo those between Sylvester Stallone and Richard Crenna in the Rambo movies, only with tongue planted firmly in cheek. MacGruber assembling his “team” is another highlight of the film, and when the film is driven more by the action than the forced comedy, MacGruber entertains.
But there just aren’t enough of those smartly funny “MacGruber” moments, and often director Jorma Taccone seems more interested in low-brow laughs. Don’t get me wrong, what MacGruber does with a stalk of celery is funny…the first time. But something that’s funny once Taccone beats like a dead horse, and the result is an action comedy that stumbles into unfunny-ness when it needs to run free like MacGruber’s Miata.
I can’t say I recommend MacGruber, except maybe as a dollar-theater curiosity. But you can certainly do much worse at the cinema these days (The Back-Up Plan, anyone?). I chalk MacGruber up as just another promising comedy idea executed just the way MacGruber himself diffuses those bombs. Poorly.
