This Movie's Underrated: "Macgruber"

Because when I start a column of underrated movies, I don't fuck around.

MacGruber could easily be confused for a war crime. It's a Saturday Night Live movie, for example, and its humor is about as crass and offensive as you can get.

But it just might be the fucking funniest thing I have ever seen.

It's not for everyone, to be sure. It's a movie where the lead character comes up with "a little distraction" for some henchmen by shoving celery up his ass and strutting out naked in front of them making bird noises. Its humor is more 4chan than Blazing Saddles. But by God, I laughed harder at MacGruber than at any movie since Superbad. And (dare I say it?) I think it's actually smarter than most people give it credit for.

Just...go with me on that one.

Since this is a film review, I am compelled by federal legislation to summarize the movie's plot. But that would be doing MacGruber disservice. MacGruber's plot is clean and straightforward, just like the mindless 80's action movies it parodies.

...at least on the surface. But MacGruber subverts almost everything it touches. It's like someone broke down an action movie beat for beat, and every time a beat SHOULD happen, they looked for the most offensive way it could NOT happen.

And when I say, "offensive", I mean that MacGruber basically runs on a full tank of premium, unleaded FUCK YOU, and that's part of what makes the movie so damned funny. But what makes it unique is that there's an underlying, endearing streak of silliness and energy permeating the film that cuts the offensiveness and adds a certain likability to the proceedings. The film walks a fine line between feeling like it's cockslapping you in the face and feeling like it's one of your buddies trying everything he can to cheer you up, no matter how ridiculous. And I find that sort of abandon and glee very appealing, and it certainly works towards endearing the audience to the main character.

 You can't see it, but offscreen right is ALL OF CINEMA.

And I'm just gonna put this out there: Will Forte deserves an Oscar. I seriously don't know of any other actor who could tackle the role of MacGruber and so perfectly laser-guide in on just the right balance of stupid, enthusiastic, horrible, hilarious, oblivious, determined, and over-the-top. This is a character, mind you, whose modus operandi is ripping enemies' throats out, and who then takes one of those corpses and poses it with two middle fingers up for the other bad guys to find. Don't get me wrong...MacGruber is a horrible person, and an idiot, and an oaf. But he is tempered by precisely-applied and carefully-portioned doses of heart and self-reflection from Forte. You get the impression that he is literally so oblivious that normal rules of morality and humanity don't apply to him all of the time.

 He is acting at roughly 9,000 Busey's in this image.

And that's part of why I think the movie's a lot smarter than people think it is. To me, MacGruber (and MacGruber) represent a scathing deconstruction of the concept of the Designated Hero (I'll be using terms from TV Tropes a lot on this blog). Basically, the Designated Hero is when the character of a story that should be the "main" one, that receives most of the attention of the plot, that all of the visual/musical/plot cues in the movie direct us to root for, is actually a huge dick, or unsympathetic, and very possibly would be the villain of another story. Basically, any time a movie asks us or tries to compel us to root for a character that is decidedly unheroic.

The biggest example of this that I can think of is Ferris Bueller, of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If you had this kid in your school, you'd probably want to punch his fucking lights out. Seriously: he manipulates literally everyone around him. He skips school and hacks into the computer to cover his tracks. He exploits the goodwill of his classmates and parents who are all genuinely concerned for his safety. And he's probably driving his friend to drink by constantly guilting him into dangerous and reckless adventures.

 This. Fucking. Guy.

If he didn't get monologues explaining himself, and if we weren't FORCED to focus on him the whole time, he'd be one of the biggest douches in history. I'm sure there are people out there who think he's a little shit ANYWAY. But we still root for him!

It's even more pronounced for action heroes. Action heroes have always been some of our most anti-heroic protagonists, and many of them commit acts in their movies that would be a war crime under any other character (Luke Skywalker, I'm looking at you). Take Arnold Schwartzenegger in Commando. Arnold's character tells another character that he's "...going to kill [him] last".

 Or, in Arnold's native German, "AIEEM GOING TO KEEL YOU LAHST". 

Later in the movie (spoiler alert!) he finds the character's motel key, and learns where he's meeting another henchman from that. But he still hangs the bad guy over a cliff and asks him where he's going anyway. Then, after the bad guy cooperates, Arnold says, "Remember when I said I'm going to kill you last? I LIED..." and drops the bad guy off a cliff.

Now let's break that down. Arnold knows that they have his daughter, and that he has a limited amount of time to rescue her. Since he has the motel key, he already KNOWS where the bad guys are meeting, and he admits as much to the poor sap he's questioning! But he still stops to fuck around with this one bad guy, asks him a question he already knows the answer to, then throws him off a cliff while admitting he lied about sparing his life!

And he doesn't know when the bad guys are meeting! Time could be of the essence! They could kill his daughter because the bad guy he's fucking with doesn't show up on time. But he still takes the time to needlessly kill someone in a sadistic way.

See what I mean? He may be the "hero" of the movie (and a thoroughly badass one at that) but his actions suggest he's kind of a dick sometimes. And a thoughtless one at that. But Arnold's character stays on the audience's side mostly because A) He's Arnold Schwartzenegger, and B) The bad guys are a bunch of no-good commie daughter-kidnappers. It's why we cheer when the bad guy gets a fucking pipe thrown through his chest, but we boo when the good guy's kid just gets slapped around a little.

I believe that MacGruber, intentionally or unintentionally, is a wonderful experiment in what happens when the Designated Hero has the bare minimum of sympathy invested: MacGruber's wife was killed by the villain, Dieter Von Cunth (also known as the "King of Running Jokes"). And Cunth is planning on nuking Washington DC, true. But Cunth is charming and capable, as well as incredibly funny (Val Kilmer hits it out of the park, kids).


MacGruber, meanwhile, is offensive, sexist, a liar, a coward, possibly insane, violent, disgusting, and incredibly perverted. He kills with glee and abandon, and is more than willing to sacrifice his friends to save his own hide. While he gets a little self-reflection and changes a bit at the end, he doesn't stop being...well...MacGruber. But he's fighting a bad guy! And the movie's named after him! Shouldn't we be rooting for him?


The answer...

...is no.

"FUCK YOU, DICKHEAD--"

One of the reasons I think people get offended and angry when watching MacGruber is that they think the hero is supposed to be MacGruber. But that's why I think the movie's such a great skewering of the Designated Hero. If you go in trying to root for MacGruber, you will be sorely frustrated.

 But not as sore as MacGruber when he tries the--oh, just watch the movie.

Really, it's his partner, Dixon Piper, who's the most root-for-able character. He's actually what saves the movie for a lot of people, and what makes the whole skewering work. He says everything we're thinking, and some things we don't think of, such as when MacGruber defends ripping out the throat of a bad guy by saying "He would've done the same to me!" Piper's response, naturally, is, "No he wouldn't, he would have SHOT YOU!!"

In reality, Piper is almost more of a protagonist than MacGruber is, considering how much of the "action" in the movie he does, and how he changes to accept a little of MacGruber's craziness and even try some of his less-insane tactics. And every time Piper takes MacGruber down a peg, we cheer for Piper, and when MacGruber finally mans up, we cheer Piper for taking him to task enough to do it. Ryan Phillippe deserves a medal both for playing one of the best straight men in cinema and also for putting up with MacGruber, even if he is just a character.

"All you do is TALK and FUCK THINGS UP!"

Piper is basically the actual hero that makes the Designated Hero look that much more insane. There's no kidnapped kid or dirty Nazi's here...so the movie shows what happens when a really shitty Designated Hero is ripped out of surroundings and casts that are tailored to make him look sympathetic.

And that really makes you think about some other action heroes...

Seriously! He killed, like, 1,100,000 people! With two torpedoes! Not even a frown as he left the cockpit!

 So that's why I recommend MacGruber. Funny as hell, hidden depths...and you won't stop quoting it. EVER.