Friday, May 21, 2010
MacGruber
It is no easy task to spin off a feature film from Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketches, especially to make the film funny. The fact that SNL has been a sleepy yawn during the last few seasons does not help either. Therefore, it is a bold move to turn a not-so-hyped SNL character MacGruber into a motion picture. The gamble pays off. "MacGruber" (USA 2010 | 99 min.) is a hilarious goofy ball that makes you laugh while make your to shake heads in disbelief.
As the character MacGruber normally does in SNL, this film also needs him to defuse some kind of explosive. This time, it is a missile smuggled from the Russians. MacGruber (Will Forte) has been "dead" for ten years since his wife (Maya Rudolph) was blown away on their wedding day by Cunth (Val Kilmer), for a reason that will make you laugh. Cunth obtains a nuclear missile from the Russians and plans to blow up the capital on the night of the President's State of Union address. MacGruber is regarded as the most qualified person to take up the saving the nation challenge. He is back to the action from his death and teamed up with straight-faced Lt. Piper (Ryan Phillippe) and his old friend Vicki (Kristen Wiig).
No matter how dangerous the situation is, MacGruber always remembers to take his radio out of his car and carries it around. Probably everybody, not only the guard in the film, gets surprised when the celery stalks are used creatively. Why celery? Although the jokes are sometimes raunchy, offensive, and even outrageous, they are laugh out funny. Some scenes might have lingered too long to gross out the audience—if you ever get shot, maybe you just want to leave the bullet in your body if you are with Vicki. However, we all know what to expect in this film if we have seen MacGruber on SNL. Adding video game type of violence and shouting out the f-words on the big screen is what SNL can never come to close. Along the way, the film manages to be funny, that is what really counts after all. "MacGruber" opens on Friday, May 21, 2010 at Bay Area theaters.
|
