Macgruber3- will forte as Macgruber

Making a movie out of Macgruber seemed like a dumb idea to me — I always thought the sketch was heavy on the cute gimmick and light on the comedy.  But when they hired The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone to direct and made it a hard-R rating with Val Kilmer playing a villain named Dieter Von Cunth, suddenly it was interesting.  It premiered at SXSW, and the reviews are just now starting to trickle in like pee on the end of my wiener when I don’t shake it off long enough:

The film itself was fun but lightweight, and once again showcased the difficulty of expanding a cute spoof from “Saturday Night Live” into a feature narrative.  There’s plenty to like in the film, and not a lot to remember. -Hollywood Reporter’s RiskyBusinessBlog

MacGruber is not, even for a second, half as clever as the SNL sketches it’s based upon. Instead it’s an unending string of easy scatological jokes which, despite being easy, it executes really, really well.  MacGruber doesn’t even attempt to defuse a single bomb. He does however rip out a few throats, and that’s enough to make MacGruber funnier than any SNL movie since Wayne’s World 2. Ok, it’s not exactly a stiff competition. -CinemaBlend

Going into a full-length MacGruber movie (which debuts nationally May 21), my expectations were pretty low.  It didn’t suck. In fact, it was effing hilarious. I haven’t heard an audience laugh that hard in a long, long time. -Flicksided

Despite the fact that I don’t find the MacGruber sketch funny for two minutes, the film starts strong. Unfortunately, once it starts to wane, its descent goes uncorrected. -FilmSchoolRejects

We’d have breathed a sigh of relief if it were merely not awful. The fact that it’s actually pretty good, a gleefully silly action parody that doesn’t run out of steam before it’s over, is just icing on the cake.  Having acknowledged that MacGruber is very funny, by turns crude and subtle but mostly crude, I must also acknowledge that it ain’t exactly an instant classic. As far as solid-but-disposable comedies go, however, it’s more than enough to satisfy moviegoers. -Cinematical

The jokes are as dumb as you might expect, but dumb in a surprisingly good way. And yes, that’s where I saw Will Forte and Ryan Phillippe’s asses. Both, by the way, got raucous audience approval. -TimeOutChicago

The great conceit of Jorma Taccone’s film version of “MacGruber” is that it plays like a crappy Rambo sequel.  It’s uncanny timing, since this year’s biggest trend seems to be the fetishistic resurrection of ’80s action, with “The Losers” and “The A-Team” and “The Expendables” all coming soon.  And here, before any of them, Taccone pretty much nails what they’re all chasing, sending it up even as he embraces it fully.  The result is a film that’s easy to watch and consistently funny, even if it is as substantial as a merengue. -HitFix

Take these with a grain of salt, as these reviewers are largely the same people who loved Buried and thought Tucker & Dale was amazing (when Buried was an abortion and Tucker & Dale is mildly funny at best).  But the consensus seems to be that it’s a fun and enjoyable ride if ultimately disposable, like the hookers in my crawlspace.