When psychotic madman Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer) holds the United States hostage with his possession of a rogue Russian nuclear missile, Col. James Faith (Powers Boothe) can only turn to one man, and one man only, to stop him. MacGruber (Will Forte).

Ryan Phillippe, Will Forte and Kristen Wiig in MacGruber © Rogue Pictures

Thought dead for a decade, the retired military professional has been living in seclusion trying to forget about Con Cunth’s wedding day massacre of the love of his life Casey (Maya Rudolph). Faced with the opportunity to get his revenge, as well as to save the day, this is a mission MacGruber can’t refuse, re-teaming with the lovely Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and joining forces with military specialist Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) to cut off Von Cunth’s balls so he can shove them down his throat.

I don’t have a lot to say about MacGruber. This isn’t exactly my kind of comedy, very few of these scattershot satirical efforts finding a way to score with me. Sure I liked Airplane, and I have a soft spot in my heart for The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear, and while Peter Sellers will always be king other than the brilliant A Shot in the Dark I can’t say his Pink Panther flicks ever floated my boat.

In the case of this ferociously and fearlessly R-rated take on the “Saturday Nigh Live” skit of the same name, which incidentally is also one of my least favorite in recent memory, I do have to cut Forte, director Jorma Taccone and the rest of the cast and crew a little bit of slack. There are moments here that are admittedly very, very funny forcing me to laugh out loud. While I can’t say I loved what the filmmakers ultimately came up with I didn’t exactly hate it, either, so for fans of the skit or of this type of comedy that’s probably as close to a glowing recommendation on my part as you could ever hope to get.

The hard part for me here is that all the best bits I’d feel like I was doing people a disservice if I started to talk about them. What worked best for me about some of the humor here is that I never saw the gags coming. Where most of them begin riffing on something familiar like Rambo or 9 ½ Weeks or, naturally, “MacGyver,” they don’t stay in that realm for very long. Forte and his team of writers find plenty to riff on and are obviously having a blast doing it, and when the come up with something that clicks they hit it so far into the stratosphere I imagine Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker are somewhere giving them a standing ovation.

On the flip side, like so many other films culled from the world of “SNL” this one, even at a brisk 90 or so minutes, tends to overstay its welcome. On top of that I couldn’t help but feel like Hot Shots!, Top Secret (which just so happened to be Kilmer’s debut) and Team America: World Police hit a lot of these targets already. While some gags are terrific a great majority feel almost freeze dried, and for those even slightly familiar with the titles I’ve already mentioned (as well as a great many others I’ve avoided reminding you of) the sense of déjà vu one gets while watching this film is a tiny bit disconcerting.

Still, with a great soundtrack of kitschy favorites, a wink-wink-nudge-nudge mentality that’s hard to hate and with some nicely modulated straight man performances from Wiig, Kilmer and especially Phillippe I never detested sitting in the theatre watching the movie. There were moments that made me laugh even when I knew I shouldn’t (this film doesn’t so much flirt with bad taste as jump right into the cesspool and do the backstroke), and by and large I felt like the film got the job done. While that’s not especially effusive I’m not sure what else there is for me to write about here, and while not comedy gold MacGruber could be comedy pyrite which in the case of this scattershot genre is good enough for me.