The Legendary MacGruber. Former Navy SEAL, Army Ranger and Green Beret. Served six tours in Desert Storm, four in Bosnia, three each in Angola, Somalia, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Sierra Leone. Recipient of sixteen Purple Hearts, three Congressional Medals of Honor, seven Presidential Medals of Bravery and starting tight end for the University of Texas, El Paso.
It seems there is a lot of negativity towards MacGruber in the reviews. 5.2/10 on Rotten Tomatoes, 5.6/10 on IMDb – it’s not to say that these ratings are unjust, but I feel people are taking MacGruber too seriously or perhaps it simply caters for those who have a wider humour spectrum. The movie itself is all nonsense and literally ridiculous, but you simply can’t help but laugh at foul mouthed dialogue, mini-parodies, raunchy soundtrack and play on words – ‘cunth’ anyone?
MacGruber is an ex-special operative who is called back into action to take down his archenemy, Dieter Von Cunth, who is in possession of a nuclear warhead and bent on destroying Washington, D.C.
Although the plot is straight forward, It feels as though it was almost written overnight or by a 13 year old – but that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things considering the movie is purely driven on its dialogue, not to mention one of the funniest sex scenes I’ve seen in a movie since Team America.
MacGruber is said to be the best of the best, the elite, cream of the crop but in reality he can only be described as a big douche. He dresses like Macgyver, drives a Mazda and carries his car radio everywhere – at one point, he even goes as far as to put a celery stick up his ass to divert attention – classic MacGruber. His sidekick, if you can call him that is Lt. Dixon Piper (played by Ryan Phillippe) who MacGruber makes out to be the clueless rookie, yet probably has more qualifications and training than MacGruber himself.
Then you have Dieter Von Cunth (played by Val Kilmer) the token bad guy, I can’t help but laugh every time I hear “Cunth”, for obvious reasons. If you’re unsure of what I mean, you can read up on it here. While the character of Dieter Von Cunth doesn’t get much screen time, any that he does is usually absurd – he is either belittling MacGruber or painting portraits of naked old ladies with drooping tits.
I’d say this movie would be a cross between Get Smart and Austin Powers in terms of that raunchiness and plain stupidity with the exception being MacGruber is filled with about 10x 50x more memorable one-liners and humour which is crude – sometimes it leaves you thinking, “dude, are you normal?”. But you can’t help but laugh at it all. I can see myself and my boss at work repeating some of the dialogue for months to come.
The action sequences in MacGruber are pretty average, just your run off the mill type – apart from the half dozen throats ripped out within the space of 10 minutes by the man, MacGruber himself.
MacGruber is one of those movies that if you go into it expecting something serious rather than just 90 minutes of pure nonsense, stupidity and laughs you’ll probably end up turning it off after 9. So sit down, shut up and just enjoy it.
Filed in Delayed Movie Reviews