SXSW Review: “MacGruber”

I’m not gonna lie; I’m no longer much of a Saturday Night Live fan. I’m not even a huge fan of the 3-minute MacGruber sketches that have been so popular. So, going into a full-length MacGruber movie (which debuts nationally May 21), my expectations were pretty low. I even commented while waiting in line for the premiere here at SXSW that I expected the movie to suck since most SNL spin-offs have been awful.

It didn’t suck. In fact, it was effing hilarious. I haven’t heard an audience laugh that hard in a long, long time.

Most SNL sketches have completely milked a situation’s humor dry, so when you try and turn a 10-minute It’s Pat skit into a 90-minute flick, well, it’s shit. MacGruber is different. It was an almost too short sketch that was begging for more time, more action and a bigger backdrop. Well, the MacGruber character got all of those things, and as a result we got more comedy than the SNL version has provided.

Instead of continuing to ride a one-trick pony and have MacGruber continue to be a shitty MacGyver who always let’s the bomb go off, star Will Forte is given an expanded character. Forte doesn’t just take this character and run with it, he takes this character and runs wild with it. Like Austin Powers and Ron Burgundy before him, MacGruber shines as a glorifed fuck-up who, for some reason, is a legendary icon in his field. He doesn’t just fail to disarm explosives any longer; he rips throats out, drives a Miata, shoves celery stalks up his ass, begs to suck your dick a la Menace II Society and has the common sense of one of those Jersey Shore chicks.

The filmmakers knew they had an explosive character in Forte’s MacGruber. Instead of disarming him by keeping this strictly a spoof, they allowed him to turn Mac into something more. They surrounded him with strong personalities — a ballooning Val Kilmer as villain Cunthe comes to mind — and let him blow this puppy up. Sure, it’s low-brow, Rated R and not exactly uncharted territory. Who cares? It’s also the funniest spoof we’ve had in quite some time. Mister Mister’s ultra-cheesy 80s hit “Broken Wings” plays at a memorable moment in the movie, which is appropriate considering the SNL folks have seemingly “learned to fly again.” MacGruber is, well, a fucking blast.

Blow-Out-Your-O-Ring-Laughing Funny