More Movie Reviews-MacGruber

My last three articles have been movie reviews. Is watching movies all I do with my life lately? At least Roger Ebert has the excuse that half his jaw has been removed and he now eats through a tube and talks through a Speak & Spell. I’m 90% sure every one of Ebert’s reviews now ends with “This movie managed to take my mind off the fact that I’m halfway to Johnny Got His Gun-ville for 90 minutes. Thumbs up!” Well, I can eat solid food and my mouth in no way resembles a vagina (well, since I grew a beard, maybe that of some Italian broad in a 50s stag film), so here’s my unbiased review of MacGruber.


I’ve caught one or two MacGruber sketches on SNL, and don’t recall them being anything outstanding. In each one, the painfully unfunny Will Forte just yaps a lot to people far more amusing than him in that weird, affected voice of his instead of disarming a bomb and then everyone explodes. (As an aside, seriously, fuck Will Forte. There are very few people in this world I know I’m funnier than and thus should be enjoying the success of, but he’s one of them. He almost manages to ruin this masterpiece which depicts a falcon snorting blow and then double-teaming an octogenarian with Alec Baldwin. How? Animals doing drugs is always hilarious and Alec Baldwin is one of the funniest guys on the planet. Yet Forte almost manages to Sammy Hagar the situation.)

The only reason I wanted to watch MacGruber was, up until the Thursday before its release, it was enjoying an astounding 92% approval rating over at Rotten Tomatoes, meaning it had to be doing something right. I went to bed confident that I’d take my mom and brother out to see it over the weekend and, once again, they’d lavish praise upon me for my choice in films (and overlook the fact that I make a paperboy’s salary at age 29 and it’d probably be my mom treating the three of us to the movie even though it was my idea to go see it). Come Friday morning, however. MacGruber‘s lofty 92% rating had plummeted to 51%, something I’d never seen happen to a movie before. If someone had replaced the film’s last reel with footage of baby seals being clubbed as Napalm Death blared in the background, it’d still have only gone down to 65%, tops. Now I had to go just to find out how bad this piece of shit was.


On Sunday, I decided the time had come. I rounded up m’lady (note: “M’lady” is a super-classy way to address a broad. You’d be amazed what you can get away with in bed if you simply request it in a fake British accent and and toss a “m’lady” on the end of things) and we shelled out the $18 for two matinee tickets to MacGruber. And, after all the buildup, how was the film? Meh. It had some solid (and surprisingly dirty) jokes, but any time I wasn’t laughing, I was actively despising the flick. Will Forte was as weak as I figured he’d be and Kristen Wiig’s recurring gimmick throughout the film was getting dressed up like a man, which only confirmed my suspicions that she’s hiding a schlong that would put John Holmes‘ to shame. Ryan Phillippe was serviceable as MacGruber’s young apprentice, but you know what? Spelling “Phillippe” is a real pain in the ass and I had to do it multiple times when writing this, so f him, too. At least Val Kilmer was great in his role as MacGruber’s arch-nemesis Dieter von Cunth (get it? Almost sounds like “cunt.” Ha.), but I’m pretty sure I’d have rooted for John Wayne Gacy had he been hell-bent on killing Will Forte, so maybe Kilmer wasn’t that amazing, after all.


Do yourself a favor and skip MacGruber, at least in the theaters. It’s the perfect movie to catch on HBO some Sunday afternoon when you’ve got a debilitating hangover and anything that would make you laugh too hard would only make your head feel even worse. And if anyone makes the obvious joke that this article is also so unfunny that it is safe for hangovers in the comments section, I promise to hunt them down and shove a Capri Sun straw up their prick.

Tagged as: Kristen Wiig,  MacGruber,  Roger Ebert,  Ryan Phillippe,  Will Forte.