SXSW Review: MacGruber, Big, Dumb, Retarded Fun

Loud, boorish and borderline mentally retarded, Jorma Taccone's stupid-fun paean to '80s action flicks, "MacGruber" is still admittedly a good time of imbecilic laughs and hilariously dumb sequences.

And like promised by co-writer Bill Hader, "MacGruber is a hard R that is shockingly crass and vulgar at times. While some of these jokes go too far and miss the mark, they do also provide some unexpected and outrageously fun laughs.

Make no mistake: "MacGruber" is dumb, but it's not dim-witted or cornball, and there's value (and laughs) to be found in its adolescent humor (yes, we too like to laugh at dumb shit when its well-executed).
Based on a pretty mediocre Saturday Night Live sketch (like many SNL skits these days), this should really be the end of the conversation and we admittedly groaned hard when this project was first announced, but we were happy to be proven wrong.

As you'd expect, the action comedy doesn't put a high premium on story and the narrative is seemingly lifted from every thick-headed action comedy from the Reagan years. The plot zeroes in on ex-special operative MacGruber (Will Forte) who is called back into action to take down his archenemy, Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer), who's in possession of a nuclear warhead and hellbent on destroying Washington, D.C. for no apparent reason other than cold hard cash (what else).
The problem is that after Cunth killed MacGruber's wife (Maya Rudolph) at the altar with a rocket launcher (now that's an objection to a holy matrimony), the special ops super solider eventually retired and swore off fighting crime with his bare hands and his resourcefulness (the character is a spoof of '80s TV show "MacGyver" that starred mulleted Richard Dean Anderson as a peaceful, yet inventive do-gooder). Living in a Mexican village and acting as a sage to the loving children around him (they hurl epithets at him and call him a loser), MacGruber initially turns down the offer from his old army chief Colonel Jim Faith (a perfectly cast Powers Booth) to finally get revenge on his arch enemy and save the country as well.

Yet, eventually, he relents. But the first act of friction arrives with Faith's new golden boy soldier, Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe in a funny turn he still might regret for the rest of his life, joking... sort of). The two butt heads (literally) and while the Colonel insists they work together the hard-headed soldier — still living in an '80s time warp of feathered hair, red Miatas, pull-out tape deck boxes and Rick Springfield-like soft rock — refuses until his own mishaps force him to turn for help (we can't spoil, but holy shit was this funny).

MacGruber eventually then enlists Piper and Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) — the best friend of his wife and now a talented piano songwriter and lyricist — to act as a covert group to infiltrate and thwart Cunth's nefarious plans.

To divulge the plot further is pointless, as their isn't much of one. MacGruber soon reveals to himself to be an inept moron and the young Phillipe starts to lose respect for the single operative who has been awarded 16 purple hearts, 3 Congressional Medals of Honor and 7 presidential medals of bravery. But eventually his ingenuity (and luck) outweigh his brainlessness.
There's one particular celery scene that may go down in infamy and might be one that Phillipe never lives down (or one that prevents him from ever getting nominated for an Academy Award), but at the very least it reveals the actor to be a good sport and one with a big sense of humor. As you might expected, Val Kilmer is largely awesome as the bloated asshole villain as well. Look, the picture is beyond absurd and completely ridiculous, not every joke comes up aces either and some are just too flat and pedestrian for their own good, but that MacGruber provides real laughs at all was somewhat unexpected. Overall, the picture was much more enjoyable than we would have ever imagined (remember our fangs were out at first over the idea).

Don't get it twisted: "MacGruber" isn't masterpiece theater, it's a big dumb, fun ride through the cliches of '8os testosterone-filled mansploitation films like "Rambo," any number of Arnold Schwarzenegger films and the trashy greatest hits of Dolph Lundgren and Jean Claude Van Damme, and it's not even that clever. But it is also one of the best SNL movies in a long time (not that that's saying a lot) and is pretty damn enjoyable for what it is. The laughs are frequent enough, the explosions are silly and it's just far better than it really has any reason to be. We're also quite aware that we saw it during the infectious energy of a film festival and the picture went over raucously, but if we enjoyed it more in that circus like environment, it wasn't by much. Those who were entertained by the moronic and mentally handicapped humor demonstrated in Will Ferrell's "Step Brothers" — an especially juvenile and dumb movie, we can't help but laugh with — should probably appreciate the value of "MacGruber." It's not aiming to be anything other than an amusing send-up and celebration of self-assured idiot characters and acid-washed jean eras and in that it respect it mostly succeeds. [B]