MacGruber
(2010)
I feel sorry for most
of the people involved in this awful piece of crap. I feel sorry for puffy Val
Kilmer; even he, with his indiscriminate workload, shouldn’t have to suffer
like this. I feels sorry for Kristen Wiig, who is a genuinely funny, talented
comedienne. She’s forced to grin and bear it. I even feel (just a little) sorry
for Ryan Phillipe, just because no one
deserves this. But I don’t feel sorry for Will Forte. He’s one of those Saturday Night Live funny men who somehow
never stops working, yet never succeeds in making anyone crack a smile.
SNL movies are
generally terrible, but this one reaches new lows. It’s not the surfeit of
poo/cock/fucking gags; it’s the reverberating sound of comedic incontinence. Forte
thinks the height of chuckleworthiness is calling the master villain Cunth. Rather
than his singular stick of celery, Forte appears to have pulled the entire
script from his arse. Co-writer and director Jorma Taccone might be accused for
having no eye for staging a joke and zero understanding of comic timing if he
had anything decent to work with in the first place. This plays like Hot Shots Part Deux written and
performed by Uwe Boll.
The same unfunny SNL
MacGyver skit is stretched without
variation over 90 desolate minutes. Even a lifeless comedy can retain something if the star is a natural
comedian (Will Ferrell) or has deadpan charm (Leslie Nielsen) but Forte is
ragingly devoid of comic abilities. We’ve seen the hapless professional
incompetent so many times before that it requires someone special to make an
impact; Forte is certainly special, in that his talents are entirely inimical
to locating the funny bone. What compelled Alexander Payne to cast him opposite
Bruce Dern in the forthcoming Nebraska?
I can only guess that is he is a more talented straight actor than he is a
comedy one. It’s inconceivable that he could be worse.
The entire movie is as much fun as being interred beneath a
mound of Forte’s much-vaunted faeces. The comedy rings out with all the lustre
of a tuneless violin. There’s a half-decent sight gag concerning MacGruber’s
obsession with a car number plate, but mostly it’s on the level of Kilmer’s
villain laughing over the loss of his own genitals because it means MacGruber
won’t be able to tear them off and force feed them to him. Wiig looks like strangely
like Alexander Skarsgaard in a blonde wig and beard. The whole thing is just
shockingly bad.
1/2