Not that many reviews in, but so far they’re all positive.
What the hell? This is a one joke sketch on SNL, and even the one joke isn’t all that funny. Are these early reviews a mirage? what could they have possibly done with this sketch that would make it any kind of worthwhile feature film?
When I first head this was going to be a movie, I thought it was joke. Then when I realized it wasn’t a joke, I thought it was the worst idea ever and wondered what the studio was thinking to greenlight it.
Has anybody seen this, or do they know much about it? How is it possible that it’s even medocre, much less actually halfway decent?
All the reviews I’ve read (okay, two) say it’s better than it has any right to be. Sure, it was a one-note sketch, but that means the scriptwriters just made up their own movie that parodies 80s action flicks. From all I’ve seen, it looks fucking hilarious and I can’t wait to see it.
Remember, Wayne’s World was an excellent movie, too. The fact that most SNL-based movies are total shit isn’t necessarily because of their source, but more due to the creatives (or not-so-creatives) behind the movie.
Yeah, The Blues Brothers is widely considered to be the best SNL movie ever (perhaps damning it with faint praise, but still) and it wasn’t even based on a sketch. All they had was a couple of characters. I can see where if they turned MacGruber into an action-movie parody like Bosstone said, that could be pretty good. Although I’ll admit I was also completely bewildered when good reviews started coming in for this thing.
There is clearly nothing there to work with if they were interested in adapting a 30-second skit to a 90-minute movie. But even SNL writers are smarter than that. They made a 1980’s action-movie parody, and put MacGruber in it. Word on the street is that it’s pretty awesome.
I don’t watch SNL so didn’t realize at first it was based on something there. So I thought it was just a MacGuyver parody about 20 years after anybody would care about such a thing (but then has anybody under 20 actually seen the A-Team and they’re doing that too).
Personally I’ve seen nothing funny in the trailers but if they’ve made a good movie then good for them.
Another example. A few years ago, Disney announced a crazy plan to make movies based on their theme park attractions. One of the first ones was a terrible movie based on the Country Bears from Disney World. But the next one was Pirates of the Caribbean, which was much better than anyone I know expected. (Now the sequels sucked, but that’s because they were simply a shameless grab for money.)
This is a classic example of how Rotten Tomatoes’s method of review aggregation fails. RT forces critics to divide their opinions into either “I liked it” (fresh) or “I didn’t like it” (rotten). As a result, you can end up with a movie that everyone kind of likes (say, enough for a B grade) with a 100% perfect RT rating.
You can get a sense of this if you scan the blurbs for “MacGruber.” Although everyone seems to enjoy the movie, it’s all guarded praise - “It exceeded its very low expectations,” or “It’s fun enough if you turn your brain off” type of comments. I suspect that once Metacritic updates with more reviews, you’ll find that most of these “positive” reviews grade “MacGruber” somewhere in the C+ to B+ range.
I’m looking forward to seeing it. I thought the Macgruber sketches were some of the funniest sketches of recent years, and they’ve got Jorma Taccone helping with the writing.
MacGruber!
He has a drink or two each night, but it doesn’t affect his job!
MacGruber!
The guy’s a social drinker!!
MacGruber!
I agree. I remember one “fresh” review last year that said something like: *If you like date rape and barfing humor you’ll love this! *I thought at the time how is that a good review?
