Movie: ‘MacGruber’
In Theaters: May 21, 2010
Director: Jorma Taccone
Runtime: 99 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for strong crude and sexual content, violence, language and some nudity
Gecko Rating: 
My review: This is the dumbest movie ever made! My son’s review: This is the best movie ever made! Clearly, they’re going for the teenage boy demographic. And as my son noted, it’s not supposed to be a serious movie. It’s supposed to be dumb, so I guess, in that regard, the filmmakers got it right.
Still, most of these ‘Saturday Night Live’ skits should remain skits, and I’m not budging from that on ‘MacGruber.’ Better as a skit.
The story is really secondary to the characters, but here goes. Ex-special ops agent MacGruber (Will Forte) is living a peaceful life in a monastery. Well, not altogether peaceful, since the kids there pull pranks on him and then run away swearing. But all that goes away when super military guy Col. James Faith (Powers Boothe) comes calling.
He needs ‘MacGruber’ to take out an old nemesis, Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer), who’s in possession of a nuclear warhead and bent on destroying Washington, D.C. Yes, his name is Cunth, so as you might imagine, there’s a running string of ‘Cunth’ one-liners.
MacGruber assembles his old team, but things don’t go quite as planned. So he’s left with former teammate Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and young military guy Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe), whom MacGruber hates for no apparent reason. We’ve also got MacGruber’s dead wife, played by Maya Rudolph.
MacGruber is supposed to be a goofy character, and he definitely fits the bill in this movie. He’s also crude (you’ll never look at celery the same way again), mean and out of touch with reality. It sort of just made me want to go back and watch the original MacGyver series again, starring Richard Dean Anderson. Also, Phillipe, Boothe, Rudolph and Kilmer seem totally out of place, since they’re usually seen in serious movies.
I guess if you’re a teenage boy or a big fan of the ‘MacGruber’ skits on ‘SNL,’ you might like this movie. And it does have some funny parts, though you can watch most of them in the trailer below.
Note to Parents: The R rating is spot on, as the movie includes plenty of sexual innuendos, actual sex scenes, course language, and violence (MacGruber loves ripping peoples’ necks off).
Images: Universal Pictures
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