MacGruber (2010)
Directed by Jorma Taccone
Everyonce in awhile a movie comes along that makes me feel so fucking good about life I can barely contain myself. It makes me laugh at least once an hour hearing dialog re-played in my head. I try to tell everyone I know that I respect to go see it. In an almost subconcious way I try to wrap my life around the feeling I got from the movie. I'm like a junkie, seeing it multiple times in the theatre, quoting it constantly, listening to the soundtrack non-stop, pathetically wondering what it'd be like to live in that universe.
Why?
I don't know. It just feels so good to get out of that theatre and see the world painted just a little like the story I just watched.
"Jesus is this guy a fucking dork."
Movies shouldn't be the most exciting thing I do, but most of the time it's the only thing that can make me feel anything on a meaningful level (besides music and sex). I don't think I'm a sociopath. I care very much about the people in my life but films hit a space in my brain that no human or event can reach.
I saw Inglourious Basterds three times in the theatre and the last two times I cried. When Donnie Donowitz comes out from under the bridge swinging a bat to the music of Ennio Morricone I started crying. It's kind of irrational, it wasn't a particularly moving scene.
The same thing happened to me during MacGruber.
"The fucking SNL movie...you cried during an SNL movie?"
Yes I did. MacGruber gets out of his car dressed in a white suit and cowboy boots in slow motion and the moment his foot touches the ground "Take Me Home Tonight" by Eddie Money starts playing. It hit me like an emotional punch in the face after having laughed my ass off for most of the film. It instantly took me back to 1986 when I lived in Las Vegas right before my parents got a divorce. I remember hearing it on the radio while driving around with my Dad. We got home and he proceeded to tell us that he was leaving.
I guess a piece of film being poetically put to good music is what really does the trick. Did my brain reach back to 1986 and bring up the pain of my parents divorce? I guess so...and now here I am crying alone in a theatre in Marietta, GA watching a MacGyver spoof.
Val Kilmer (looking like he's done some serious drinking in the past few years) does a fantastic job as the villian Dieter Von Cunth. Will Forte creates a suprisingly complex character out of the SNL Sketches. MacGruber is arrogant, stupid, insecure, reckless, homophobic (even though he offers to "suck your fucking dick" to keep from being kicked off the case twice), backstabbing and stubborn. Somehow you end up liking the guy and enjoy watching him fuck things up. Ultimately you find out that he's responsible for turning Dieter Von Cunth into the man he's become which makes him just as evil if not more so.
Kristen Wiig plays Vicki St. Elmo, a mouse-ish musician who's skills are detection and running away. After seeing the film three times it seems her character is necessary to balance MacGruber's idiocy and provide a love interest but is the least interesting of the movie. Wiig does a great job playing the part, it just seems hollow by design.
The plot is a seemless blend of Rambo, Lethal Weapon, Roadhouse, Die Hard, Tango and Cash and many other 80's action films. The main part being "bad guy steals nuclear warhead which he will use for something evil and only one man can stop him" kind of thing. Powers Boothe essentially plays Col. Sam Trautman from First Blood and he and Ryan Phillippe are excellent straight men for Forte's string of non-sensical ideas and actions.
The film pushes the envelope for laughs so if you don't like throat rippings, corpse desecration, dick jokes, solo saxophone performances or ghost fucking you should avoid MacGruber. However, if you're someone that doesn't have a stick up their ass and realizes that jokes are jokes you will most likely enjoy this film.
Any film that can make me laugh hysterically, bring up childhood trauma, expose me to Emerson, Lake and Powell and make me think about terrorism in the same 90 minutes is a great one in my book. Some people on this earth still know how to tell a good joke.
Directed by Jorma Taccone
Everyonce in awhile a movie comes along that makes me feel so fucking good about life I can barely contain myself. It makes me laugh at least once an hour hearing dialog re-played in my head. I try to tell everyone I know that I respect to go see it. In an almost subconcious way I try to wrap my life around the feeling I got from the movie. I'm like a junkie, seeing it multiple times in the theatre, quoting it constantly, listening to the soundtrack non-stop, pathetically wondering what it'd be like to live in that universe.
Why?
I don't know. It just feels so good to get out of that theatre and see the world painted just a little like the story I just watched.
"Jesus is this guy a fucking dork."
Movies shouldn't be the most exciting thing I do, but most of the time it's the only thing that can make me feel anything on a meaningful level (besides music and sex). I don't think I'm a sociopath. I care very much about the people in my life but films hit a space in my brain that no human or event can reach.
I saw Inglourious Basterds three times in the theatre and the last two times I cried. When Donnie Donowitz comes out from under the bridge swinging a bat to the music of Ennio Morricone I started crying. It's kind of irrational, it wasn't a particularly moving scene.
The same thing happened to me during MacGruber.
"The fucking SNL movie...you cried during an SNL movie?"
Yes I did. MacGruber gets out of his car dressed in a white suit and cowboy boots in slow motion and the moment his foot touches the ground "Take Me Home Tonight" by Eddie Money starts playing. It hit me like an emotional punch in the face after having laughed my ass off for most of the film. It instantly took me back to 1986 when I lived in Las Vegas right before my parents got a divorce. I remember hearing it on the radio while driving around with my Dad. We got home and he proceeded to tell us that he was leaving.
I guess a piece of film being poetically put to good music is what really does the trick. Did my brain reach back to 1986 and bring up the pain of my parents divorce? I guess so...and now here I am crying alone in a theatre in Marietta, GA watching a MacGyver spoof.
Val Kilmer (looking like he's done some serious drinking in the past few years) does a fantastic job as the villian Dieter Von Cunth. Will Forte creates a suprisingly complex character out of the SNL Sketches. MacGruber is arrogant, stupid, insecure, reckless, homophobic (even though he offers to "suck your fucking dick" to keep from being kicked off the case twice), backstabbing and stubborn. Somehow you end up liking the guy and enjoy watching him fuck things up. Ultimately you find out that he's responsible for turning Dieter Von Cunth into the man he's become which makes him just as evil if not more so.
Kristen Wiig plays Vicki St. Elmo, a mouse-ish musician who's skills are detection and running away. After seeing the film three times it seems her character is necessary to balance MacGruber's idiocy and provide a love interest but is the least interesting of the movie. Wiig does a great job playing the part, it just seems hollow by design.
The plot is a seemless blend of Rambo, Lethal Weapon, Roadhouse, Die Hard, Tango and Cash and many other 80's action films. The main part being "bad guy steals nuclear warhead which he will use for something evil and only one man can stop him" kind of thing. Powers Boothe essentially plays Col. Sam Trautman from First Blood and he and Ryan Phillippe are excellent straight men for Forte's string of non-sensical ideas and actions.
The film pushes the envelope for laughs so if you don't like throat rippings, corpse desecration, dick jokes, solo saxophone performances or ghost fucking you should avoid MacGruber. However, if you're someone that doesn't have a stick up their ass and realizes that jokes are jokes you will most likely enjoy this film.
Any film that can make me laugh hysterically, bring up childhood trauma, expose me to Emerson, Lake and Powell and make me think about terrorism in the same 90 minutes is a great one in my book. Some people on this earth still know how to tell a good joke.
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