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QUICK TAKE:
Comedy: A clueless soldier of fortune is called back into action to thwart his archenemy, who wants to nuke Washington, D.C.
PLOT:
MacGruber (WILL FORTE) is a former special forces operative who has lived in exile since his wife, Casey (MAYA RUDOLPH), was killed on their wedding day a decade earlier. He gets a chance at revenge when Col. Jim Faith (POWERS BOOTHE) recruits him to stop Dieter Von Cunth (VAL KILMER), the megalomaniac who murdered MacGruber's bride and now wants to destroy Washington, D.C., with a stolen nuclear weapon.
After accidentally killing the first strike team he assembles, MacGruber recruits his former assistant, Vicki St. Elmo (KRISTEN WIIG), and young hotshot Lt. Dixon Piper (RYAN PHILLIPPE) for the mission. Vicki agrees to the assignment, because she secretly loves MacGruber. Piper vows to see that the mission is done properly, sensing MacGruber's ineptitude.
Together, they get into a series of misadventures on their way to a showdown with Cunth. These episodes include messing up a Las Vegas club, engaging in a shootout with bad guys in an abandoned warehouse, and crashing one of Cunth's parties. Along the way, MacGruber fights his growing sexual attraction to Vicki while trying to honor the memory of Casey.
OUR TAKE: 5.5 out of 10
Our reviewing policy for films that aren't shown in advance to critics (or are done so late the night before they open, as was the case with this one) is that we'll only provide a couple of paragraphs about the film's artistic merits or, more accurately, lack thereof. After all, life is too short to spend any more effort than that on a movie that even the releasing studio knows isn't any good (which is why they hid it from reviewers before its release).
First and foremost, a comedy should be judged on one basic criteria. Was it funny? Did I laugh? Well, I'm here to report that "MacGruber" IS funny and I did laugh on numerous occasions. How often you will laugh will depend on your threshold for raunchy, profane, potty-mouthed sex humor. This is a hard R, folks. It's rapid-fire smut of the highest (or, uh, lowest) caliber. The writers and cast members throw so much at the screen, that for every three or four gags … and I do mean, gags … that don't work, a fourth or a fifth hits the funny bone just right and it's impossible not to chuckle.
"MacGruber," based on the long-running "Saturday Night Live" sketch that parodies the old "MacGyver" TV show, never elicits that kind of rolling laughter great comedies of this type - "Airplane," the original "Naked Gun" - achieved on initial viewings. But when it is funny, it is very funny. And the more you know about '80s action movies like "Lethal Weapon," "Rambo," "Die Hard," and "Road House," the more you'll relate to the humor here as "MacGruber" skewers those and other flicks of the period with great affection.
The cast includes Will Forte as the title character, a bumbling soldier of fortune tasked with saving the world; Kristen Wiig as his faithful assistant, who loves him from afar; Ryan Phillippe, as the straight-laced military officer who disapproves of MacGruber's methods; and Val Kilmer, as the hammy super-villain bent on nuclear destruction. All concerned are game for the material, much of which alternately tickles and disgusts. I can't imagine it being half as funny on a second viewing or without a large, and seemingly slightly inebriated audience as I saw this one with. Still, it rates a 5.5 out of 10. (T. Durgin)
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