No disaster for 'MacGruber'

“MacGruber” was recently pre-screened at IU, with Jorma Taccone, Will Forte and Ryan Phillippe in attendance for an interactive Q&A following the film.

The room’s energy was relentless; in fact, the only thing that drew more cheering from the audience than the movie was Forte’s presence. He turned most of the attending frat boys into schoolgirls as they flailed toward the aisles in hope of catching a high-five or handshake from the “Saturday Night Live” vet.

The film itself was able to match the crowd’s intensity from the get-go, beginning with an action scene that introduces Val Kilmer as Dieter Von Cunth, a stupidly explicit sexual innuendo that replays for the duration with surprising freshness.

Cunth is able to obtain a dangerous nuclear warhead, and the belief is that he will use it to strike the White House. Enter MacGruber (Forte), who is apparently a decorated war hero and explosives expert. After he accidentally kills the first team he assembles, he must lean on his ex-fiance’s friend Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and the up-and-coming Lt. Dixon Piper (Phillippe) for all their help in bringing down Cunth.

“MacGruber” maximizes every ounce of R-rating limitations, pushing the envelope mostly through MacGruber himself. Sex, violence, and raunchy comedy litter the film from top to bottom, and an inordinate number of the jokes rely on Forte’s butt for the punch line.

Is this a good thing? Cautiously, surprisingly, however definitively, yes.

That is another important element of the film: Forte himself as the lead. He, along with the writers, immediately step outside the preconceived notions of the sketch to construct a believable but still appropriately ridiculous MacGruber who doesn’t totally rely on any one kind of humor, like a typical “SNL” character.

The film also utilizes several cameos, and good cameos at that — not for the simple novelty of seeing a recognizable celeb in a different context. Each member of MacGruber’s initial team is a WWE wrestler, including Big Show, who has one of the film’s most shockingly hilarious moments when he shares a kiss with another guy. MacGruber decides against making him a member of the team following the incident. Amar’e Stoudemire is also in the film for a brief moment, nearly receiving a champagne glass to the head.

Really, the comedy is great: expectably stupid and outlandish, but unexpectedly self-aware, never pushing tired jokes or losing its direction for the sake of entertainment. Its slightly childish but vintage slapstick approach endears itself to the viewer. Even the action sequences are hilarious; the writers and director (Taccone) never pass up an opportunity to utilize even the smallest of jokes.

It’s a solid comedy debut from Taccone, who will hopefully become known as more than “the other guy from ‘Jizz In My Pants’” to mainstream audiences, and the somewhat-more-serious acting foils of Phillippe and Kilmer help hold the whole thing together.