Check your brain at the door, It's a big screen lobotomy.
I went in with an open mind ready to let loose and have some laughs - having read no reviews, totally unprejudiced, even hopeful. This is everything everyone feared and then some. It is, in my opinion, a miserable movie that never should've been made - wait make that never should have even been considered being made. I can maybe tend to come off a little uptight, but I have a very open mind. And I'm certainly no prude. This movie basically is just basically a never ending barrage of jokes made for five to ten year olds, but WAY too dirty and violent for them.
It tries to be an action/comedy like Pineapple Express, or Get Smart, or even if it's trying for the purposeful absurdity of movies like Shoot 'Em Up, and the Crank series it really just falls flat into the category of "ridiculous stupidity" - not even on the level of The Naked Gun movies.
Definitely not for the prudish (let me warn you about that, because it takes things way WAY over the top on the gay jokes). How many mostly lame poop and pee and gay jokes mixed with gratuitous splatter house "throatripping" can you have packed into one hour - that's basically the question Will Forte must have been asking himself when he penned the script. It definitely goes for shock factor, and that's definitely one of its strong points.
There are a few very funny jokes (for me, I can count them on one hand), and a few decently funny comedic through lines (like him taking the pull out radio, from his smokin' cherry red convertible Mazda Miata, in and out everywhere he goes). Another is when he cuts his hair - you think he's going to buzzcut it and he cuts it into his signature mullet. Story: It starts out seeming to have halfway decent potential, with his old boss Col. James Faith attempting to recruit the retired MacGruber from a ten year stint as a monk, under the guise of having died a fake death. Having changed his ways, he's vowed never to return to military service - because his wife was exploded at the altar by his arch enemy
"Dieter Von [foo foo]h" (which is funny for about the first ten minutes), who's now gotten hold of a nuclear missile, formed a team of deadly killers, and is threatening the world. MacGruber's the man with the plan "without a plan", who's going to form a team of "deadly killer stoppers" to go after [foo foo]h, seek revenge, and save the world. MacGruber goes to recruit his old teammates (there are many references to certain war movies, Top Gun, The A Team, and of course Macgyver going on all over the place), and all but two of them join. You get introduced to Lt. Dixon Piper and Vicki St. Elmo in the scenes bookending this section. So things are going well -
MacGruber has his team back together, and they all get into the bus that he's "personally loaded with tons of c4". He gets in an argument with Piper and the bus "accidentally" (or should I say "MacGruberistically") explodes, killing his whole team. He's a failure (as usual) and he tries to form a new team by apologizing to Piper, begging on his knees, offering to suck his ****, and let him "screw him", and even, I think offers to "lick his ***hole" (in a cringe worthy scene that left the theater dead silent). Finally Piper feels so bad for MacGruber he just joins the team. MacGruber makes up a new plan, "that's not a plan", Vicki joins the team, and they finally get down to business finding [foo foo]h. Turns out MacGruber has the hots for Vicki which culminates in them "making love all night" (which is one of the funnier scenes, and turns out to be like 30 seconds as MacGruber characteristically once again prematurely blows his load - also a reference to Top Gun).
Somewhere in all this nonsense, they keep dressing up Vicki like MacGruber and "the killers" to "trick the killers" into who knows what - with Piper saving the day everytime by shooting the bad guys with his guns, because MacGruber of course won't use guns. He prefers to stick celery up his butt and jump around naked to distract the enemy, with no backup plan, and of course - you guessed it - later eat the same celery (which he says he washed off then quickly admits that he didn't) - this one was actually really funny.
Anyway, things come to a head as Magruber tracks down [foo foo]h, disarms his nuke, and explodes [foo foo]h in the process, narrowly escaping. THE END... well cut to MacGruber's and Vicki's wedding where [foo foo]h comes back looking like a d movie two face; with MacGruber attempting to finish the job that he's been threatening all along of cutting off his genitals and shoving them into his mouth, but it turns out MacGruber even fails at this having blown off his genitals in the disarmed missile explosion. With a barely functional and laughable [foo foo]h threatening to ruin the wedding ceremony; MacGruber finally gets the balls to use a gun, comes to the rescue and shoots [foo foo]h through the wall off the cliff, then shoots him some more, then some more, then blows him up with an exploding shell, then pees on him, extra shakes and all (this one was actually also pretty funny). YAY THE END. *run to the car, and drive home as fast as you can, and kick yourself all the way there for having spent $10 and an hour of time*
1/5 Characters: MacGruber (Will Forte): Dumb as a box of rocks, never makes any sense, is so over the top that it's not even funny - like the guy is on heavy quantities of drugs (and not in a good classic SNL John Belushi, or even Chris Farley way either).
MacGruber goes from being an idiot without a gun, to falling in love with a dunce, to having sex with his dead wife's ghost,
to being an idiot with a gun - that is his full character arc.
2/5 Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillipe): He is the only decent thing in it actually. He's half watchable, and is the voice of reason to MacGruber's idiocy that still usually wins out. He goes from being the young rookie of "the team", to the only smart one who barely goes along with MacGruber, and is really the most heroic of the movie.
3/5 Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig): She's MacGruber's love interest after his dead wife approves of her (after he makes love to his dead wife on her gravestone, with both of them having premature explosions), and as a member of the team she's just an idiot who actually listens to everything MacGruber says, and falls for him in the process. She's always stilted, and I've never much cared for her acting... rarely funny, and always trying too hard.
1.5/5 Dieter Von [foo foo]h (Val Kilmer): He's come a llloooonnnnnggggg way down from The Doors, and even Salton Sea. I've actually always liked Val Kilmer, but this was not a great choice in roles. He's just a power hungry, manipulative typical bad guy. There is nothing substantive here worth mentioning at all
(which goes with the theme of the whole movie).
2/5 I get that it's supposed to be a mindless spoof; have no message whatsoever, and just be completely fun. And it succeeds highly with the former two qualities. There will be people this movie will highly appeal to, but it just wasn't working for me. The only redeeming quality I could find in it at the end of the day, is that Will Forte's managed to create a new genre; It's so bad, I'm going to have to say it's a parody of a parody - a spoof of a spoof. If that was intended, I have to hand it to him - he's a genius! (unfortunately I don't think it was lol).
There is nothing else I feel worth mentioning. Not a must see, not even a "wait for it to come out on dvd", this is more like "don't waste your time on it", in my humble opinion. The reviews on this movie seem to vary greatly so apparently
you'll either love it or you'll hate it - I'm certainly leaning toward the latter, and I still don't see it stacking up to the classics like Naked Gun and Austin Powers.
I give this thing a
1.5/5