THE EPIC FILM JOURNAL - DAY TWENTY TWO

Film Number 26 - MacGruber

It has been ten years since the Ladies Man bombed hard and stopped the flow of films based on Saturday Night Live sketches. The Ladies Man was a lot of fun, very underrated but everything that you expect from a feature length SNL sketch, lots of crass innuendo, musical numbers, silly dialogue, stupid characters, and lots of highs and lows. I have enjoyed most of the SNL movies that have been released, the high being Wayne’s World unless you count Blues Brothers in the mix. Of all the contemporary SNL sketches to choose from MacGruber does seem like an odd choice. The segments are between one and two minutes, a good third of them are the theme tune and they are often pretty repetitive. What about a film adapting Jean K. Jean the popular French Def Jam comedian or how about a full length Laser Cats movie? Anyway about 10 minutes into the film it becomes very clear to me why they use MacGruber, the character has no back story and we have no expectations about what he is capable of.

So let’s begin, the opening introduces us to Val Kilmer, the villain of the film, a crudely named Dieter Von Cunth who hijacks a nuclear war head. We move to MacGruber’s base and have a credit sequence that would be completely pointless if it wasn’t for the awesome new theme tune complete with all the saxophone solo’s you need to tell you that this film is firmly planted in an 80’s mentality. We meet MacGruber in his tenth year of self imposed exile, he lives in the desert and walks among the people, caring for orphans and loving his village. He is offered a mission to stop Von Cunth, the man who killed his wife. MacGruber finally comes around to the mission, trims his hair digs up the coffin which contains his classic attire and gathers together a crack team of the best soldiers that he knows. Unfortunately MacGruber accidentally leaves a ton of C4 in a van that incinerates his team.

MacGruber enlists a new team consisting of Ryan Philippe as Lt Dixon Piper and Kristen Wiig as Vicki St. Elmo. The plot from here on out is pretty much what you would expect they stop Cunth, Wiig and Forte get together and it all ends on a high. With a film like this, who really cares about the plot? The pacing moves just like an episode of SNL, there’s the really funny scenes, the musical numbers, the bits with guest stars, the filler, the moments you forget instantly, the stuff that doesn’t work, luckily there is no segment like Weekend Update.

Will Forte’s Mcgyver rip off is what holds the film; the character is naive enough to make his arrogance and stupidity both charming and engaging. MacGruber talks a big game but is completely useless, the moment when he finally has a chance to show off his skill at turning house hold items into deadly weapons, he fails and throws a tennis ball that smokes a bit. Instead of jumping out guns blazing he decides to make a distraction by taking of his clothes and shoving a stick of celery up his ass. These are just a few of the fun gags that feature in the film and help to hide the lack of plot. The dialogue is from the world of Airplane; sharp quick and witty, sometimes vulgar and crude; this tongue in cheek writing is hard to find these days, it’s done well in this but it is still far from the quality of Naked Gun. I do really commend the film for not making hundreds of horrible pop culture references and goofs; it is sad that I have to commend this but after the recent offerings to the world of parody it is unfortunately what I have come to expect.

Kristen Wiig finally has a role bigger than a cameo; she does her best and makes it funny, it is just a shame that we never see her do anything more. Throughout the film we are told that she is the best of MacGruber’s team yet all we ever see her doing is messing up the plans and being cute. She is easily the funniest female performer around and I cannot understand why she isn’t doing more films. It is also interesting that this film wasn’t scattered with SNL cast members and alumni, the only one I saw was Maya Rudolph and she left the show a while ago. Val Kilmer’s bad guy is funny to see at first but he plays the role far too straight, if he had loosened it up a bit and made it slightly more eccentric it would have been far more memorable. Like OSS, it was fun again to see a parody that emulated the filmmaking it was lampooning, the soundtrack is full of amazing synth scores and saxophone riffs full of emotion. The film is full of epic slow motion action and scenes of throats being ripped out. If you see this film you will also see one of the most disturbing and equally hysterical sex scenes ever, as I write this the sounds still haunt me. MacGruber was a very funny film and one of those movies that is best seen in a giant theater full of people, unfortunately the film has bombed pretty hard so the chances of seeing this in that situation will be difficult. It is a hard R for a reason and it is a shame that they couldn’t have refined the script slightly to make the film more solid, you get the feeling that the film was a very rushed production.

It’s hard to rate a film like this, I want to give it a high score because I have a great love for this kind of humor but I have to look at fairly as I have viewed other films. The best I can give this film is 6 out of 10, it needs a lot of work but there is some great stuff here.