MacGruber embarrasses itself

A hit-and-miss action spoof (the misses often landing harder than the hits), MacGruber is reasonably successful largely due to the exertion of star Will Forte. Doing anything for a laugh---the character MacGruber's standard numbers are getting naked in public areas, grunting scarily during sex, carrying celery in his ass and hallucinating that he's copulating with his wife's ghost---every time the movie embarrasses itself, Forte finds a way to redeem it. Not as knowing as SNL subgroup The Lonely Island's other feature Hot Rod, nor as sharp an action hero send-up as Tropic Thunder, MacGruber plays more as an update on the Austin Powers formula. Rather than a 1960s movie artifact, multiple-combat-medal-winner MacGruber is a fossil of masculinity prominent in MacGyver and the Simpson/Bruckheimer action films that ruled the ’80s. Transposed to the present, he's an egomaniacal cretin. Director Jorma Taccone relies too heavily on ironic power ballad montages, but the subject's out-of-place machismo is a timely joke.