Here's one of those irrefutable film critic litmus tests.
To give a passing grade to this sloppy, one-note, scatologically obsessed trifle is to propose that the lowest common denominator of entertainment is an altitude hovering thousands of feet above the peak of Mount Everest.
See Ryan Phillippe debase himself. See Kristen Wigg in the dumbest sex scene ever put in a comedy movie. Worst of all are the plotless meanderings about a villain named Cunth (Val Kilmer) who has been hired by the Chinese to fire a missile at the White House.
Naturally, Cunth killed MacGruber's wife-to-be at their wedding ten years earlier. Rather than developing snazzy excuses for MacGruber to cobble together tricky devices from duct tape and paper clips, the filmmakers choose to wallow in the character's lesser qualities of cowardice, whiny incompetence, and anal fixation — at one point MacGruber sticks a celery stick in his bum and parades around.
In another scene he brags about depositing his poo in a toilet tank rather than the bowl. Even the film's anachronistic jokes that poke fun at '80s culture fall flatter than an Andrew Dice Clay joke from back in the day.
This movie sucks.
Rated R. 89 mins.
