MacGruber

Directed by Jorma Taccone

(R)

*

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MacGruber tries hard to spin a feature-length film “out of an idea few would try expanding beyond a Saturday Night Live skit,” said John DeFore in The Hollywood Reporter. Like the SNL bits it’s based on—which mocked the ’80s TV series MacGyver—this action-comedy is only sporadically funny. Will Forte plays MacGruber, an idiotic but resourceful Special Forces agent who must track down the villainous Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer) and disable his nuclear warhead. Director Jorma Taccone cobbles together ’80s nostalgia, “lazy gags,” and arbitrary explosions into “a jerry-rigged contraption” that finally runs out of ideas. MacGruber definitely feels as if it were “put together with gum, shoelaces, and a couple of sticky Twizzlers,” said Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News. Forte’s bumbling can be amusing, but he and sidekick Kristin Wiig are saddled with a “lame script.” Still, MacGruber is good for a laugh or two, said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. In fact, this might be the best SNL spinoff since Wayne’s World—though that’s not saying much, since the competition includes It’s Pat and A Night at the Roxbury.