Big Picture Big Sound

Number One with a Mullet

The folks at "Saturday Night Live" will happily base a feature film on the thinnest of sketch characters. I'm thinking wincingly of "Night at the Roxbury" and "Stuart Saves His Family", among many others. Of course, occasionally they strike gold ("The Blues Brothers", "Wayne's World") but with the latest skit-to-screen adaptation, "MacGruber", they may have finally gone too far. At an average of 60 seconds, SNL's MacGruber segments barely qualify as skits - never mind that the character invariably dies in a fiery explosion at the end of each episode. Still, there's something on-the-money about Will Forte's mullet-wearing take on Richard Dean Anderson's dare-I-say-iconic 80s TV character, MacGuyver (heck, the name itself has become synonymous with improvised solutions). So I was willing to follow Mr. Forte into a feature-length outing. It's a shame, then, that this adaptation misses even the most obvious of opportunities. What's left is as pieced together as one of its hero's many "gadgets".

I contend that the "MacGruber" theme song deserves half the credit for the character's popularity, so let's take that as a starting point for where the film went wrong. It goes, and I quote:

"MacGruber, making life-saving inventions out of household materials"

In the film, the character does virtually none of this. There's some fun had with his secret cache of "weapons" (a sewing kit, bottle caps, etc). But when the chips are down, MacGruber's fairly useless. And the chips are down often. The film finds MacGruber forced to come out of retirement to defeat his old nemesis Dieter Von Cunth (a startlingly jowly Val Kilmer). If that sounds more like a "Rambo" spoof than anything else, that's because it is. Mr. Forte, along with co-writers and SNL-vets John Solomon and Jorma Taccone (who also directed), makes the odd decision to parody 80s action movies rather than the TV character on which his skit was initially based.

"MacGruber, getting in and out of ultra-sticky situations"

Really, not so much. Thankfully, MacGruber is paired with the eager young Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe, ably playing the apprentice, as usual) who's a crack-shot with an automatic weapon. If it weren't for Piper, Mac would be history. Rounding out this A-team is Kristen Wiig as Mac's old friend and the film's ace in the hole. Ms. Wiig, as she proves week after week on SNL, has developed into a keen comic actress at the level of her contemporaries, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. If there is any justice in the world, she won't be playing second banana much longer.

"MacGruber, the guy's a freakin' genius, MACGRUBER!!!!!!!"

Yeah, no. When I first saw 2008's Steve Carell vehicle, "Get Smart", I couldn't believe they actually made the famously bumbling Maxwell Smart a good agent. Sure, Mr. Carell's version was loveably goofy, but he definitely came through in a pinch. Little did I know, at the time, how astute that decision was. Where "MacGruber" goes horribly, unforgivably wrong is by making its lead character bad at everything. There is nothing he succeeds at. I can see how this seemed like a funny idea on paper. But on the screen, Mr. Forte's schtick gets old quick.

All this and there's not even a cameo from Richard Dean Anderson (what, was he too busy?). Clearly, Mr. Forte's heart was in the right place, and he works up a sweat trying to keep the movie afloat, but it's just one bad decision after another - including the odd choice to make the film a hard-R (did we really need Mac to be a throat-ripper?). Mr. Forte has said that he'd be happy to see a "MacGruber" sequel, but I don't see that happening. With this one movie, he already did number two.