MacGruber
Directed by: Jorma Taccone
Starring: Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe, Val Kilmer
Rated R
Released date: May 21, 2010

Okay, so movies based on Saturday Night Live sketches have a spotty history at best. For every Wayne’s World, there’s an It’s Pat!. So there’s usually a sense of trepidation when one of these movies comes out. Sure, a character may work in 7 minutes sketches, but does that mean the joke can sustain itself for 90 minutes? And more to the point does the new big screen version of MacGruber work over the course of this movie? Let’s find out.

MacGruber is a send up of the 80’s action show MacGyver, everyone’s favorite Canadian science action man. On the show, MacGruber (Will Forte), his assistant Vicki (Kristen Wiig), and the week’s guest star usually find themselves locked in a room with a bomb that MacGruber invariably fails to deactivate. In the film version, MacGruber is brought out of retirement to take down his arch nemesis, Dieter Von Kunth (Val Kilmer). Kunth has hijacked a nuclear weapon, and it’s up to MacGruber and his team to take him down.

Making life-saving inventions out of household materials!
MacGruber!
Getting in and out of ultra-sticky situations!
MacGruber!
The guy’s a freakin’ genius!
MACGRUBER

Say what you will, but I LOVE the Saturday Night Live “MacGruber” skits, and when I heard they were making a feature-length movie based on those skits, I was totally fine with it.

New red band and green band trailers for the film, which hits theaters on April 23, are now online. Watch them both here below.

The MacGruber skit is a spoof on the 1980’s action television series MacGyver, which starred Richard Dean Anderson as a secret agent known for his non-violent resourceful resolution methods, which were oftentimes over the top. The big joke has always been about what MacGyver could do with a piece of gum and some tape, so MacGruber just takes that to the next level.

The film stars SNL alum Will Forte as MacGruber, with fellow SNL co-star Kristen Wiig as part of his elite team. Ryan Phillippe (Crash) is also on this team, with Powers Boothe, Maya Rudolph, and Vil Kilmer rounding out the cast.

Stop-Loss
Starring Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Abbie Cornish
Paramount Home Entertainment
Release Date: July 8, 2008

Stop-Loss is a type of film that should cause waves. Produced under the MTV films banner, this movie has all the ingredients of a great film: A great cast, excellent acting, and a thought provoking script that mirrors the current events of the real world. It should have made a ton of money in the box office but because of some artistic license exhibited by the director Kimberly Price, the movie is an example of when a good idea goes bad.

Stop-Loss revolves around a Sergent Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), who has just finished his tour of Iraq. Brandon, who experienced his fair share of horrors in Iraq, is happy to return to his home in Texas but is shocked to find out that the military has stopped him from leaving. He had been “stop-lossed,” and has to return back to Iraq. Feeling betrayed, he goes AWOL and decides to head out to Washington in an effort to overturn the stop-loss.