MACGRUBER takes the Saturday Night Live sketch played to perfection by Will Forte and brings it to the big screen with the sense of the ridiculous intact. No high-end effects, no upscale sets, its a paean to the 80s action hero genre, sub-genre television. Forte, all mullet and ego, plays it with a straight face, a sense of intense conviction, and willful petulance that is irresistible. So is anchoring him and his teammates in the 80s, even though the film is set in the present.
MacGrubers gimmick, aside from the mullet, is that while he is an action hero extraordinaire, he refuses to use a gun, even when theres one handy. Even when it would be the quicker, more effective way of handling a situation. Instead, he prefers to cobble together common items into lethal weapons. That they dont always work, that they sometimes take out the wrong people, that has done nothing to dampen MacGrubers reputation as the greatest force for good the world has ever seen. Hence, when the requisite super villain, Cunth (Val Kilmer) threatens the world with a nuclear weapon, Colonel Faith (Powers Booth), turns to the only man who can save the day. In a wondrous riff on APOCALYPSE NOW and several other lesser flicks, he traces MacGruber to the monastery where he has taken up residence after losing his wife to Cunths evil schemes on their wedding day and tries to convince the ersatz monk to return to service.
From the first frame, including the send-up of action-hero theme songs that starts things off, the flick is a parody of every stale bit of corn that can be extracted by the writers and actors. MacGrubers idol-worshipping sidekick Piper (Ryan Phillippe) provides the quintessential straight-man to MacGrubers blithe idiocy, including the de riguer disillusionment subplot that only serves to bond them more tightly. Kristen Wiig as Vicki, the woman of the team, is perfect as the tentatively empowered heroine of that earlier era. Shes a model of flawlessly feathered hair and mixed social messages that combine a less that utter fearlessness with a game willingness to go through with MacGrubers utterly ridiculous plans, usually involving her in an untenable disguise as bullet bait. Wiigs deadpan performance is earnest and twitchy with Vicki struggling with her love for MacGruber and her guilt over him being the widower of her best friend (Maya Rudolph). Kilmer is arch, campy, and not afraid to gleefully embrace the ham that his role offers.
The point is not the plot, a bit of piffle strung together to provide fodder for the non-stop gags that keep the flick afloat and everyone, including innocent bystanders, in all sorts of peril. Things are done with celery stalks that are both very, very wrong and yet somehow so right. Cunths name is a running gag involving gerunds such as pounding, and MacGrubers confession to the ghost of his dead wife about his new love for Vicki involves a carnally final farewell. It makes no sense, and if it did, the joke would be ruined.
Is MACGRUBER, film and character, dumb? Oh yes, very. Is it, film and character, funny? Oh yes, even moreso. Creating a nostalgia for a simpler time while also skewering it with a deadly efficiency, MACGRUBER is unrestrained and refreshing silliness of the first order.
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