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| MacGruber joins a too long list of horrible Saturday Night Live adaptations of sketch characters into feature length films. The ghastly circus parade of It’s Pat, The Coneheads, Superstar and The Ladies’ Man has practically ruined any reputation that this once anarchistic comedy show had. And MacGruber also challenges them for the title of worst in show. There is a pleasant little scene where Forte as MacGruber is fornicating his ghost bride. For anyone who dares to experience the 90 long minutes of this film, the circumstance of that ghost is something they will easily understand. |
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| (Patrick McDonald, HollywoodChicago.com) |
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| The chief joke is that the bad guy is named "Cunth."... How bad is this movie? So bad that critics weren't allowed to see it until four hours before it opened. So bad that to play the villain it was forced to hire the lumpy, inert remnants of what used to be Val Kilmer... Forte prances naked except for a celery stalk sticking out of his hindquarters, a gag so pathetic that you neither laugh with him nor laugh at him. You just want to give his mom a hug. Later in the movie, Phillippe's character is asked to do the same thing - but Phillippe obviously refused, because the movie awkwardly cuts to a body double. |
| Can't-miss opportunities are missed: a montage sequence about assembling tough guys for the team doesn't contain a joke - except that one of the guys is gay..."I don't know what I'm doing, and everybody hates me," cries our hero, in the most accurate line of the movie. |
| Comedy just isn't his Forte. |
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| (Kyle Smith, New York Post) |
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| There’s extreme language, over the top gore played for laughs, as well as multiple scenes containing graphic sexual references and nudity which is used not in a sensual manner but more to gross the audience out, which it does. |
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| (Daniel Thompson, Christian Spotlight on the Movies) |
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| Want an example of what passes for high comedy in MacGruber? Take the villain's name, "Cunth." Say it aloud and assume the final "h" is silent. (When doing so, you might want to make sure you're alone.) That's right: Val Kilmer is playing a Cunt(h). Are you rolling on the floor laughing? I can imagine Beavis and Butthead snickering in the corner: "He said 'cunt'." Although the most obvious flaw with MacGruber is the disappointingly low laugh quotient, that's not the sole problem. As is the case with many poor action/comedies, this one spends too much time on exposition for a plot that no one in the audience cares about. It's boring and tedious, but incorporating this extraneous material is how the five-minute skit becomes bloated to elephantine proportions. |
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| (James Berardinelli, Reelviews) |
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| And Forte? He seems like a solid journeyman comic — the sort who’s perfect for second-string duty on Saturday Night Live but is woefully unsuited for leading-man feature status. Of course Will Ferrell became a star, so I suppose anybody can. MacGruber ends with an over-the-top catharsis scene in which the villain is finally vanquished, and vanquished again — and again. But even there the makers can’t avoid adding a dick joke. Maybe they know their audience all too well. How sad. |
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| (Frank Swietek, One Guy’s Opinion) |
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| On those occasions when the baddies have him surrounded, MacGruber doesn’t stoop to the unrealistic behaviour of most action heroes, shooting and punching and otherwise whacking his way through the entire assemblage. Rather, he creates an ingenious distraction by (1) stripping completely naked, and (2) sticking a stalk of celery up his butt, and (3) strutting about like a plucked ostrich with a green tail. Warning: Do not think that, come the next wave of baddies, such hilarity doesn’t bear repeating. |
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| (Rick Groen, Toronto Globe and Mail) |
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| Like many a contemporary lowbrow comedy, MacGruber's at its best when it's most vulgar, when its foul-mouthed and essentially insane hero is free to indulge in his signature bits of raunchy whimsy. Whether it's casually working in crude confessions amid deadpan recitals ("She's the first girl I felt comfortable enough with to let eat out my asshole" MacGruber tells Piper, Forte's earnest delivery rendering the otherwise off-putting admission comic), explaining gross-out terminology ("upper decker"), or manically offering up sexual favors when desperate for help ("I'll suck your dick. I'll let you fuck me…I'll fuck something. Tell me what you want me to fuck. Tell me what you want me to fuck!"), Forte's crudeness is his greatest asset. Dryly serious or tortuously hysterical, the actor has the range and energy to keep things perpetually lively, so that when the film's central gags (MacGruber's ineptitude, his anachronistic style, the parody plotting) begin to wear thin, Forte pulls out one more bit of inspired vulgarity and, like the one his character is tenuously enacting on screen, somehow manages to keep the whole operation afloat. |
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| (Andrew Schenker, Slant) |
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| It all feels terribly routine, and as the script attempts to paper over the gaps between good gags with grahic sex, extreme violence and pratfals, it becomes clear that this particular well has run dry. |
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| (Tom Huddleston, Time Out) |
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| Leading man Will Forte will make you pine for the graceful savoir faire of a Jack Black or an Adam Sandler. |
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| (Catherine Bray, Film4) |
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| The film ends up looking less smart than the material it’s supposed to be parodying. |
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| (Andrew Pulver, Guardian) |
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| Pretty redundant to anybody who knows Team America World Police. |
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| (Edward Porter, Sunday Times) |
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, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe
