MacGruber has a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I may have not written this entry had I not found this picture.

I think we have a national treasure on our hands; a term I use as defined below:

National Treasure (na·tion·al treas·ure)
- a film which, although being catastrophically flawed in concept, garners exaggerated praise from its audience for somehow not being the huge turd they expected. Based on the movie of the same name.

MacGruber is a spin-off of an SNL skit, which haven't fared well since Wayne's World, and unlike previous SNL fims, the original MacGruber skit wasn't even funny. Okay, maybe it was funny, like, once. MacGruber is essentially a retarded Macgyver. He doesn't use guns, and relies on a variety of scraps to produce explosives; or more realistically here, distractions. His only effective homemade explosive goes off prematurely, and he's apparently more reliable with a stick of celery.

The film is designed to be stupid, and boy is it stupid. The only difficulty here is timing the poop and penis jokes correctly. It's the equivalent of Will Ferrel's character in. . . well, I was going to say Step Brothers, but pretty much any Will Ferrel comedy applies--attempting to save the world from nuclear destruction. And that sounds more desirable than the film actually is. If MacGruber does one thing well, it's to highlight why SNL stars like Will Ferrel and Mike Myers have become staples in mainstream film, and why Will Forte and Kristen Wiig haven't.


Now, the fact that MacGruber has a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes doesn't really mean anything, because Rotten Tomatoes lets pretty much every idiot critic contribute to their rating system, and because the percentage won't actually be finite for at least a couple of days. But let's roll with it. Let's assume that MacGruber receives solid reviews.

I'm all for defining a film on its own merits. In fact, I tend to rely heavily on this aspect of the review process. I stole my criticism method from a really old (I think Greek) dude who said you should base a play's merits on something like this:

1. What was the play/film trying to do?
2. How well did it do it?
3. Was it worth doing?

I think that basically sums up the critical process, so I roll with it. The problem here is that Macgruber did an adequate job with its attempt to produce a stupid movie. And though this is hardly a worthwhile endeavor, we forget that fact because we got more than we expected. Because no one goes to see a movie like MacGruber and expects greatness. Everyone expected a huge pile of poopity poo that might make them giggle. And they giggled. This spells blockbuster sucess. Damn you, Hollywood and your tricks!

Of course, Val Kilmer and Ryan Philippe saved the day, because who doesn't like a good dose of Val Kilmer and Ryan Philippe. I mean Val Kilmer is fat now, he has a ponytail, and his name is Dieter Von Cunth. Likewise, Ryan Philippe is essentially an sexy, bad boy version of Justin Timberlake, so duh!

Anyway, I'm sick of MacGruber. I'm done talking about it. I'll forget it by next week. Why do I even waste my time?

6/10


P.S. It was a 5/10 until the last twenty minutes.