MacGruber (2010): A Veritable Butt-nanza

MACGRUBER!!!! Yeah!!! Wait, hold your horses, people. I wouldn’t get too excited about this film just yet. Unless you’re the kind of person who really wants to see Will Forte’s butt over and over and over again, then I guess you can break out the party hats, because this film is a veritable butt-nanza.

Who is this MacGruber you ask? He started off as a Saturday Night Live parody of the television show, MacGyver, and has gained so much popularity he has his own movie now. The special operations agent, MacGruber (Will Forte), is brought out of retirement to stop his old enemy, Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer), who allegedly stole a nuclear bomb called the X-5. MacGruber teams up with Vicki (Kristen Wiig) and Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) to take down the enemy in a hypothetically comedic manner.

This is the kind of film that you need to turn your brain off to try to enjoy, and it’s questionable that even brain dead people will find much to laugh at. I can count the number of times I laughed on one hand. There were many points where I was like “Is this supposed to be a joke? Am I supposed to be laughing at that?” I will say that Kristen Wiig did a good job with a fairly limited character. A majority of what I laughed at was her delivery on some of her lines.

MacGruber was supposed to be an action comedy, and it failed on both accounts for me. I barely laughed and there wasn’t very much action. However, there were a few very nice throat rips and an explosion or two.

As far as action comedies go, I can think of far worse ones than MacGruber. But I can also think of many, many better ones. I wouldn’t willingly watch this film again.

Beware! Spoilers Below! But does it really matter?

Time Until Real Action Starts: ~ 18 minutes

Baddies: Dieter Von Cunth! (Try saying that five times fast!)

Best Line: “I’m gonna rip your d**k off and shove it in your mouth. And that is non-negotiable.” It was funny the first time around…but then MacGruber kept on using this line and never carried through with it.

Best Kill: Dieter Von Cunth has somehow survived the huge explosion detailed below in the Best Explosion segment. He comes back to try to blow up MacGruber and Vicki at their wedding. He doesn’t succeed and MacGruber beats him viciously. He eventually throws Cunth off of a cliff, shoots him as he falls, fires a grenade at him, and then pees on his dead body after he finally hits bottom. A little over the top, but that was the best.

Best Explosion: MacGruber finds the X-5 in a warehouse and is trying to disarm it, only he’s just too inept to. So he takes the nuclear center and the guiding system out of the bomb and makes a run for it while Cunth if handcuffed next to the bomb. It blows the whole warehouse up with so much force that even MacGruber’s mullet is shaken.

Action Rating: 1 ½ Suspicious Smelling Celery Sticks, out of 5.

Illustration (coming soon) by Alex Langley. Rocket Llama World Headquarters.

This is the Action Flick Chick, and you’ve just been kicked in the ass!