MACGRUBER: An acquired taste I haven’t acquired

  

Oh, MacGruber! Why did I have to fall for you? Why did I let you seduce me with your quilted khaki vest and your tacky plaid shirt? Why didn’t I see past your charming smile and smokin’ hot mullet? How could I have let this happen? I could have seen anything last Friday night – anything at all! I could have seen Shrek 7: Forever Some More. But I didn’t. I saw you instead. Why???

Well, it wasn’t entirely my fault. Mr. Webber wanted to see MacGruber as much as I did. We bought the tickets the day before it opened. We were literally the first in line to see it at our neighborhood Alamo theater, so worried was I that we wouldn’t get good seats. Well, I needn’t have worried. Opening night and it didn’t even sell out. That should have been my first clue!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, the good news. Will Forte was masterful, maintaining the witless MacGruber persona for 99 solid minutes. Kristen Wiig was inspired as his vacuous sidekick, and Ryan Phillippe and Powers Boothe were both flawless straight men – probably the toughest job of them all. The bad news? MacGruber was the most moronic and vulgar movie I’ve seen in a very long time – and so gory I had to close my eyes multiple times. And while I readily admit that I laughed now and then, the groans outnumbered the laughs by a good three-to-one margin.

There is clearly a market for moronic and vulgar, and I’m sure MacGruber will more than pay for itself before all is said and done. Meanwhile, I’ll continue having that wedgie of a theme song stuck in my head (“MacGruber!”), and I’ll try to forgive Val Kilmer for being a willing participant. Having said all that, I’m sincerely glad I saw it, because if I hadn’t gotten it out of my system, I would still be sitting here wishing I had. The goods news for you is that now that I’ve seen it, you don’t have to!

If you feel compelled to, you can see the MacGruber preview here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqySbDqTGGc