A Bomb 'MacGruber' Can't Diffuse

by Brett Parker

It's one thing to make a movie based on a Saturday Night Live skit, it's another to make a movie based on a bad SNL skit. MacGruber is a recently concocted SNL character that is meant to parody the hit 80s TV show, MacGuyver (talk about a joke that's 25 years too late!). Like the show's title character, MacGruber is also a specially-trained secret agent who tries to escape from deadly situations with meticulously-crafted inventions. Unlike MacGuyver, however, MacGruber is a deeply incompetent and disturbed individual who doesn't have the intelligence or confidence to follow through with his plans. This skit doesn't really produce killer laughs, only mild amusement. An entire movie with this character could grow tiring.

When the MacGruber movie got a greenlight from Hollywood, the brains from SNL did, in fact, come up with a clever objective: instead of simply spoofing an 80s television character, why not spoof all the over-the-top, macho man action movies from the late 80s-early 90s? SNL star Will Forte and his cohorts said they would look to films like Rambo, Die Hard, and Lethal Weapon for comic inspiration. It sounded like they were on the right track, but the final product misses the mark in producing consistently big laughs. It only hits its comic targets half the time, settling for misguided, lowbrow gags instead of really taking action cliches to the self-reflexive cleaners. In the end, the film is only slightly more amusing than the very skits it's based on.

The film opens with a nuclear warhead being stolen by a mysterious villain named Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer) who sports a silly pony tail and pitch black clothing. U.S. Colonel James Faith (Powers Boothe) learns of Cunth's actions and realizes that the only agent who can stop him is his sworn nemesis, MacGruber (Will Forte). Cunth tried to kill MacGruber on his wedding day by rigging a bomb at the ceremony. MacGruber survived the explosion but his beloved fiance, Casey (Maya Rudolph), died horribly. In the aftermath of the explosion, MacGruber decided to fake his own death and go into seclusion. Yet once Faith tracks him down to tell him of Cunth's reappearance, MacGruber wants back in action!
Faith explains how MacGruber is a highly decorated agent with several prestigious honors under his belt, yet in action he appears to be one of the most incompetent and lame-brained agents to ever stumble onto the field! He is constantly fumbling with his homemade weapons and brings about more chaos then he tries to prevent. His style and musical tastes also suggest a man stuck in the past: he sports a mullet, rocks flannel shirts with a tan vest, and listens to 80s soft rock constantly. Nonetheless, MacGruber carries a fierce determination to carry out his mission. After a hilarious mishap with his old soldier buddies, he recruits Faith's aide Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) and Casey's sister, Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) to help him defeat Cunth.

In a time of quick-cutting CGI frantic action surrounded by athletic pretty boys, I feel a certain nostalgia for the 80s-90s action films that MacGruber sets out to spoof. The kind of action movies that Joel Silver used to produce constantly. They used to feature grizzled he-men with troubled pasts and a cynical outlook on life. They drank, they womanized, they didn't care. They got caught up battling eccentric villains with outlandish styles and strange accents. They had interludes with women who could be just as tough, vulgar, and unforgiving as they were. There was grotesque and gratuitous violence. Limbs and blood flew around everywhere. There were explosions every other minute. There were shamelessly melodramatic developments with a wonderfully dramatic musical score to accompany it (Michael Kamen was the go-to-guy for such a score back in the day). It was a glorious era, one that I feel was inadvertently unraveled by the self-reflexive overkill of Last Action Hero and the shockingly vile violence of Ricochet. If you crack an affectionate smile whenever you hear the names John McClane, Martin Riggs, or John Cutter, then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I admire MacGruber for targeting this brand of action films, for its ripe with juicy jokes. The film really comes alive when it highlights the formulas and conventions of these outsized action standards with the same height of frantic energy. MacGruber has a strong awareness of the genres delicious overacting and bloody overkill. It follows the same developments of a throwback action picture with both a wink and a nudge. There's melodramatic flashbacks, declarations of vengeance, bloody fistfights, shameless slow-motion shots. First time feature director Jorma Taccone really has a strong sense of the look and feel of this kind of testosterone atmosphere, he just doesn't push the jokes as far as they can go. The genre's cliches are highlighted, but they are never played with in an exceptionally clever way. They are poked at from the most lowbrow level, and this spares MacGruber from being a significant spoof.

There was a dangerous air of silence in the theater where I watched MacGruber and the film's undoing is from a lack of strong gags. Aside from two uproarious sex scenes scored to Mr. Mister's “Broken Wings,” this film fails to produce any memorable or wildly hilarious gags. It's all to content with being a lame-brained stupid comedy. Stupid comedies can work wonderfully for producing great laughs, for if people hold low expectations for your film, you can get away with bloody murder in your jokes without anyone stopping you. That was the sly genius behind comedies like Dodgeball and Zoolander. In spite of Will Forte's admirable comic energy, MacGruber's childish insanity far outweighs its comic sensibilities and the result is a dud.

Part of the problem is that MacGruber himself is not fleshed out as a cooky character we can care about. The joke is that he's a relic from the 80s completely incapable of handling government missions in the present day. The film barely highlights any decade-different culture shocks, making MacGruber's 80s bravado a lifeless joke. In a time of iPods, smart cars, and Facebook, a man of the Mullet and Walkman trying to function in this era could be very funny. The first Austin Powers, for example, knew how to wonderfully milk fish-out-of-water jokes from the idea of a 60s secret agent transported to the 90s. It's jarring that the writers here could overlook such a comic opportunity.

My opinion on MacGruber's comedy reflects my same opinion on the current generation of Saturday Night Live's writers and players: they present good ideas for comic gags, but they don't mold them into true hilarity. Saturday Night Live used to be a reliable haven for live wire comic talents and uproarious gags, yet the skits nowadays are extremely limp and lame. They have the potential to be killer gags, yet the new age SNL talent are clueless when it comes to making something that really cooks. It'd be nice to believe that these players could improve over time, but the current SNL team have a curiously smug, self-congratulatory air about themselves; they think they really are creating legendary gags. They seem to think that being on SNL automatically makes them comic legends. Back in the day, SNL legends had to work harder and think smarter to etch their names in the public eye. Before guys like John Belushi or Adam Sandler became household names, they had to labor to come up with hot jokes and characters that people would actually give a damn about. Those kind of giant efforts feel lacking in SNL nowadays and those efforts are crucially missing in MacGruber as well.

It's generally acknowledged that movies based on SNL skits make for awful comedies that scrape the bottom of the barrel. As the saying goes, what works for two minutes won't exactly work for two hours. The Blues Brothers and Wayne's World are considered the exceptions, and I must admit I have a strange fondness for Coneheads. MacGruber truly had the tools and mindset to break this cinematic curse, but it fails to do so. It will unfortunately join the weaker SNL movies in comic oblivion. Now I hope that a cool film team will come out and make the MacGuyver movie, showing the YouTube era just how cool this cat really is!

A Decent 'Iron Man' Sequel

by Brett Parker

Jon Favreau's Iron Man, with its hedonist's bravado and bruised heart, was the best superhero movie I'd ever seen. While the film contained familiar strokes from the superhero genre, Favreau brought a sense of quirky humor and Altmanesque formalism that elevated the material. Of course the key to the movie's charms lied within the main performance from neurotic goofball Robert Downey, JR. While most superhero characters come across as comic misfit sweeties, Downey made his Tony Stark a narcissistic, womanizing, hard-partying cynic in desperate need of redemption. While most actors use skilled method techniques to bring superheroes to life, it appears Downey merged his inner-demons and character defects within the comic book archetype, and the result was spellbinding. While most superheroes draw us along with their flashy costumes and amazing powers, it was the hurt behind Downey's eyes that hooked us from start to finish.

It's such a disappointment, then, that Iron Man 2 doesn't build on the wonderful momentum set forth by the first film's originality but chooses instead to be a slam-bang popcorn ride. It's all too content with it's pop funkiness, and it sidesteps the strong character strokes and subtle drama of the first film to pile up on action thrills and big effects sequences. The blockbuster junkies will certainly eat this serving up, but those who cherished the uniqueness of the first film will feel that something is seriously missing this time out.

Tony Stark (Downey) has certainly been busy since the last time we've seen him. Since he revealed his secret identity as the combat robot known as Iron Man, he's been policing injustices of the world to apparently great success. It is vaguely hinted at that world peace has been materializing quickly and that Stark Industries is flourishing prosperously. Stark has appointed his personal assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) to be the new CEO of his company while Stark assures the U.S. Government that his technology cannot be duplicated.
While Stark basks in his newfound superhero status, trouble brews on the horizon. An evil Russian genius named Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) believes that the Stark family stole powerful ideas from his father and he plans to take Tony out with a deadly pair of electric whips. A weapons tycoon named Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) is also jonesing for a way to defeat Stark and thinks an alliance with the brilliant Vanko just might benefit them both. Tony's best friend Rhodie (Don Cheadle) wants the Iron Man technology to fight as the War Machine. Stark's mysterious new secretary named Natalie (Scarlett Johansson) also brings him unease. With everything going on, Tony must also contend with the fact that the very life source that's keeping him alive may also be poisoning his blood, killing him bit by bit.

Iron Man 2 is by no means a bad sequel, it just seriously derailed from the sensibilities that made the first one feel so significant. It suffers from that Hollywood habit of making sequels more bloated and outsized than the first film. New faces and several subplots are stuffed into the plot and the film never slows down long enough to develop things significantly. Favreau no longer has a grip on the patience and elegance he possessed the first time around and now frantically bounces around trying to keep every subplot afloat. Things never get boring and there are certainly very impressive action scenes, but it was scenes of attentive character details that made the first film so special. I'm reminded that for all the explosions, robots, and fights the first one contained, it was Stark being nearly brought to tears explaining his newfound ways that proved to be the most exciting moment in the entire movie.

The sequel has attracted a lot of famous faces to play iconic characters from the comics, but so busy is the plot that we never get close enough to care about any of these new additions. Scarlett Johansson radiates with sexiness as Natalie Rushman, and she has killer kung-fu movies, yet she is given zero character depth; she's merely window decoration. Terrance Howard was wonderful as Rhodie in the first film, yet this time he's been replaced by Don Cheadle. It's a long and complicated story behind Howard's departure, but essentially Favreau did not like his performance in the first film. I don't know what Favreau was thinking, for Howard is one of the most interesting actors we have and, with his physique and demeanor, he was born to play War Machine. Howard had a grace and command with the character that his replacement fatally lacks; Cheadle is humorless and lifeless in the role.

The most exciting addition to the cast turns out to be the film's biggest disappointment. The newly-resurrected method darling Mickey Rourke shows up as the vengeance-ridden Russian badie Vanko, in what is essentially a stroke of casting brilliance. Rourke's lived-in and brooding shell is perfectly suited for a villainous exterior, and Rourke worked extra hard to research Russian criminals and their lifestyle, but the performance is wasted. Rourke fought to bring layered depths to a one-dimensional character, but the screenplay won't allow them in. Vanko is given rather little to say and he is curiously absent from most of the film. The script also fails to flesh out the apparent tension between Stark and Vanko. These are damaged geniuses, bounded by the sins of their fathers, yet their relationship never elevates beyond cheap comic book psychology.

The most livewire and satisfying addition to the cast is the energetic Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. Rockwell seems tuned to the offbeat humor and peculiar emotions of the first film and jolts things up everytime he's on the screen. He revels in being a conniving slimeball and he gets high on his character's spoiled antics. A hilariously-grabbing scene shows Hammer spewing a bratty temper-tantrum towards Vanko over his failure to deliver a perfect breed of Iron Man suits. Vanko is a scary man to behold, yet Hammer never flinches in his adolescent rage. In the role of a pure snake, Rockwell shines.

Iron Man 2 is one of those flicks where sparkling individual moments outshine the whole, as they say. Iron Man and War Machine have a breathtaking battle not only with each other in Stark's home, but with an army of sharp-looking Iron Droids courtesy of Hammer. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) wonderfully scolds Stark in a Donut Shop in a scene that resembles a high school principal chewing out a classroom bad boy. I enjoyed the heartfelt and poignant riddle Howard Stark leaves for his son in old film reel footage (John Slattery from Mad Men plays Howard, although James Caan should've been allowed to reprise this role from the first film. Caan would be a perfect fit as Tony Stark's Dad). My favorite moment is the final romantic moment between Stark and Pepper, fusing the quirky character play of the first film with the dewey-eyed sweetness of the Superman-Lois Lane romance.

Iron Man 2 holds steady thanks largely to the wildly-appealing performance from Downey. His hard-living, hellraising billionaire is one of the most original superhero characters to ever grace the screen and this merging between damaged actor and comic icon is a silver screen wonder to behold. I'll follow this Tony Stark into any cinematic territory, even a mediocre sequel. I just hope when it comes time to make Iron Man 3, Favreau returns to the first film and realizes what made it work so wonderfully.

BY THE WAY: Remember how Iron Man had a really cool scene placed after the end credits? So does the sequel and it's also worth waiting to check out after all the credits have played. You thought you were fired up for the Avengers initiative before? Wait until you see this!