"MacGruber", 2010

Will Forte stars as MacGruber

    It's a shame that in a day and age where Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's movies regularly make over $50 million that a true spoof movie comes along and gets absolutely no attention.

    "MacGruber" made just over $9m on a $10m budget, qualifying it as a flop. Conversely, Friedberg and Seltzer’s last movie, "Vampires Suck", made over $30m (and was one of the lowest  grossing efforts from the pair). This is a shame, as "MacGruber" is what Friedberg and Seltzer’s movies fail so spectacularly at trying to achieve: spoof.

    The film lampoons the TV show MacGyver, specifically (obviously), but also takes aim at most of the ‘80s action movie standards, such as “Rambo”, “Die Hard” and “Commando”.  The plot follows Will Forte’s eponymous MacGruber (an “explosives expert” stuck in the ‘80s) trying to foil the plot of Dieter von Cunth (Val Kilmer) to blow up a State of the Union Address with a nuclear warhead. If this sounds over-the-top and ridiculous, well that’s kind of the point. Joining MacGruber are Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and, much to MacGruber’s chagrin, Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe). They are the hero’s second choice of a team, after a small disaster takes the lives of his original team (portrayed by a crew of WWE wrestlers, including Chris Jericho). I’ll save the particulars of what exactly happens, as it is one of the funnier parts of the first third of the film.

    The acting in the film is pretty uniformly solid and the casting agent deserves a pat on the back. Phillippe works excellently as the straight man to Forte’s MacGruber and goes to great lengths to sell the comedy. Wiig, Forte and Phillippe all show their thorough understanding that there can be no ego in comedy. None of the principals are afraid to look absolutely ridiculous in their efforts to capture the audience’s laughs. Val Kilmer also delivers a solid performance, his villain swinging from menacing to absolutely absurd with ease.

    The movie’s beautifully shot with clear and bright colors and image detail. Unfortunately, this leads to the CGI effects to become incredibly noticeable at times. This is really only one of the major complaints I have with the film. There are a couple of jokes that fall flat (most involving the recurring secondary plot thread with a license plate number), but this is a minor quibble that usually occurs with most films in the spoof genre.

    Overall, MacGruber succeeds admirably in it’s purpose, garnering chuckles in sending up the action-hero genre. It’s a movie that, sadly, fell through the cracks and I recommend it to anyone looking for a good, politically-incorrect film. 

7.5/10