MacGruber (2010)

MacGruber don’t play like homie, and homie don’t play that game.

— MacGruber

Saturday Night Live is trying to harken back to the days that they had successful spin-offs of their characters like the Blues Brothers in The Blues Brothers or Wayne and Garth in the Wayne’s World franchise instead of the less than great ones like Superstar, Night at the Roxbury, It’s Pat and The Ladies’ Man. Will Forte translates his famous bumbling hero MacGruber in this big screen adaptation. Does this break the curse? The answer is a resounding no.

I have to admit I have seen bits and pieces of the sketches. I got the jest of them. MacGruber is in a situation where there are explosives and he has to disarm it, but he blows himself up and everyone around him instead. How do you make that into a movie? This movie tries to play it completely straight, but makes fun of those typical eighties action movies.

Col. James Faith (Power Boothe) tracks down the only American hero that has earned the rank of Green Beret, Navy SEAL and Army Ranger and was awarded sixteen purple hearts, three Congressional Medals of Honor and seven presidential medals of bravery at a monastery in Pueblo, New Mexico. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to the details.

He has Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Philippe) in tow to find a guy that was presumed dead for a decade after MacGruber’s fiancée, Casey (Maya Rudolph) was killed at the alter by the evil Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer). He is up to his old tricks when Von Cunth orchestrates a massacre in Siberia in order to steal a nuclear warhead, the X-5. Inexplicably, the U.S. government could only turn to this bumbling idiot to help stop Von Cunth.

Col. Faith wants MacGruber to have the inexperienced Lt. Piper as the part of his team. MacGruber declines because he doesn’t like him. Plain and simple. MacGruber tries to assemble his own team with a bunch of old friends that are real-life wrestlers: Frank Korver (Chris Jericho), Tut Beemer (Mark Henry), Vernon Freedom (MVP), Tug Phelps (The Great Khali), and Tanker Lutz (Kane).

When the team are about to depart, MacGruber’s homemade C-4 bombs accidentally kill his team. His second team now includes Piper and a former team member of MacGruber’s, Vicki St. Elmo (Kirsten Wiig). She is hesitant about reteaming with MacGruber who has a “budding music career.” She quickly drops that to go on the idiotic journey with MacGruber.

I was wrestling with the movie when the credits rolled. I kinda liked it, but it some things did not work at all. The only things that I laughed at when the sexual humor, the sex scene and the scene with the celery. That’s it. Everything else was dead in the water to me. I can’t pontificate anymore about this.

Judgment: Another SNL movie going into the Hall of Shame.

Rating: **