MacGruber

 "Making Something of Spit and Bailing Wire, and Getting...Spit-Covered Bailing Wire"

The track record for any movie coming out of the sketch-comedy of "Saturday Night Live" is pretty abysmal. "The Blues Brothers" and "Wayne's World" did fine, but their sequels didn't. We won't bring up "A Night at the Roxbury," "The Coneheads," "The Ladies Man," "It's Pat!," "Stuart Saves His Family," ad infinitude. The reason is as obvious as a Mike Myers first-draft (are there any others?)—a concept that can, at most, sustain itself for under 10 minutes has chances of "slim" and "none" of being any good stretched to 90 minutes, let alone two hours. Thank God we've never seen "Subliminal Man" made into a movie...or "The Continental."

As a 5-minute sketch idea, "MacGruber" fits the bill for an "SNL" skit, although it's concept is the same week after week, the minutest of details being the only things changing. Will Forte plays a dorky McGyver-type, who has mere moments to defuse a bomb by creating something...bomb-defusing...using icky stuff that no one wants to touch let alone re-configure. And, of course, there are complications while Kristen Wiig does a panicked clock-check. The sketch ends with a building blowing up. Cue the Band. Christine Aguilera comes up after the break.

Same joke, every week. If something works once on "Saturday Night Live," they'll keep doing the sketch until that comedian quits or is canned. Somewhere along the way, some exec thought it a good idea to turn that well-tread idea into a feature.

It's sporadically funny in a "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I" kind of lameness. And it boasts Ryan Phillippe (in slow-burn mode), the usually drop-dead-funny Wiig, and such good actors slumming as Powers Boothe (good to see him) and Val Kilmer, trying to re-capture his youth with a goofy comedy role (I'm suddenly waxing nostalgic for "Real Genius" and "Top Secret!"--the name of Kilmer's character is Dieter von Cunth, which shows you the level of humor, but doesn't clue you in that they will use it over...and over...and over...and over...for a rapidly declining chance of a laugh).

In this, MacGruber is coerced out of retirement ("I thought you were dead, MacGruber.." "So did I") in a remote native village (where he can find peace), when it's learned that von Cunth may be up to something no good.* Stuck in the 80's with his mullet, his plaid shirt, tan utility vest, and his Blaupunkt removable in-dash tape-player (he takes it everywhere). One wishes there were more entertainment value in seeing the usual action cliche's—the ones that turn up routinely (and straight) in Michael Bay films—played for laughs: the slow motion team walk, the fiery mega-explosions that have no hearing loss attached to them, the smug banter that passes for dialog, but the laughs are few and far between. You'd think given the time and budget they'd have come up with a grander concept—maybe even come up with a clever gadget or two—but there's nothing like that here. The best idea MacGruber (and the movie) can come up with is creating a distraction by going commando and parading around with a celery stalk up his ass.

No. Really. And they do it twice.

They couldn't even think up a "gadget." For pity's sake.
Save yourself. The clock is ticking. Don't go anywhere near this bomb, and watch these "MacGruber" video's instead.

"MacGruber" is such a "Waste of Time."

* ...Like the rest of the movie.

Alexander

"Alexander" (Oliver Stone, 2004) In the two-way race getting the story of Alexander the Great to the screen between Baz Luhrmann and Oliver Stone, the latter got there first, having worked on a screen-play since 1989. Luhrmann's announcement of an "Alexander" project was probably just the thing Stone's film needed to get off the ground, and his thorough planning shows (historical inaccuracies aside): this is one of Stone's deftest film--a combination of his macho liberal ethics and his pre-disposition to turn everything into braying Myth. Here he's dealing with Gods and Titans and men who reach beyond their grasp, and if one thinks this one has a political agenda talking about a King wanting to chase his Persian prey into the mountains, you're only scanning the surface for easy targets.*

Stone's going for epic statements here of dreamers and the pains they inflict on Society** and a pretty good tying up of some major themes in several of his films without descending into his fall-back of the "Good and Bad Fathers of our Soul." Oh, there is familial stress going on constantly with two of the more watchable stars as Alexander's warring father and mother King Phillip and Olympias (Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie***). Their battles for the betterment of Alexander (Colin Farrell) make up the intrigue that Stone keeps flashing back to once Alexander reaches Babylon and established his first Alexandria city-state. But the main focus is Alexander and his battles from Ireland**** Macedonia to Persia to India, each one given their own specific vantage point. The desert combat in Persia is given a neat over-view by a mythic hawk, the latest in a long line of familiars haunting Stone protagonists. The India battle is an epic jungle gore-fest between man and beast that turns into a red nightmare, but is affectionately begun with an old-time movie iris-out.

The film is so full of "rules of thumb," you begin to wonder if there's not a training manual with the thing ("A commander never gives an order he wouldn't carry out himself," "Don't surrender your reason to passion," "Moderation in all things" and the film's mantra "Fortune favors the bold"), and as gritty as Stone makes it (and there's a lot of blood-spatter flying through the battle scenes), it has the pristine quality of those Hollywood sword-and-sandal epics where even the Persian city of Babylon seems immaculately free of dust. Stone seemed inspired by the look of "The Lord of the Rings" and its way around a vast story-line, but seems to favor his Myths well-scrubbed.

Still, it's an epic that was filmed in 93 days, despite far-flung locations and looks miraculous despite the tight schedule. For all the things that could conceivably have gone wrong, Stone's Cecil B. DeMille styled dream project managed a lot of things right.

* Stone's "W." biography would show up at the end of 2008, looking rushed and a little wasted and without much to say. You can't satirize a political satire, and the joke ceased being funny a long time ago.

** In an odd post-mortem, Alexander's kinsman Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) supposes that Societies are inspired by dreamers and then exhausted by them to the point of wishing them failure, if not death. That's an interesting thought coming from Mr. Conspiracy Theory. Stone's also one of those liberals who likes to include all of us to enjoy his guilt—"It's all out faults." Hey, speak for yourself, mack!

*** Stone is particularly praise-worthy of his actors on the commentary track of this film and with good cause--Farrell shows off the promise that his over-hyped career has only suggested, Kilmer is as boisterously good as he's been in years, and Jolie again shows why she's one of the most commanding actors on the screen these days. She has a line reading ("Loves. Loves!") that wheels between conflicting emotions with such quick-silver speed that it nearly whips your head around. One would be tempted to see that she's the latter day Ava Gardner if not for one thing—she's a better actor than Gardner. Stone loves a touch of madness in his actors. Jolie is his perfect match.

**** Farrell doesn't disguise his Irish accent, and the kid who plays him (very well) in the early sections of the movie does a fair register of Farrell's brogue. But most of the actors have Irish accents that at times is distracting, but somehow seems fitting for the folk-tale blarney with which Stone tells the story. You go with it, as it feels right. Kilmer's accent is American. Jolie's is faux-Greek.