macgruber thriller

Even if you were a fan of 80% of the SNL skits turned into movies (we’re talking borderline stuff like Night at the Roxbury and Superstar) you had to be nervous about MacGruber. I mean, this is a parody of a pre-existing ‘80s TV show (MacGyver) with the same punchline…every…single…time. That doesn’t give you much to work with. Maybe that’s why the more successful elements of star Will Forte’s film take aim at Reagan-era clichés (mullets, removable tape decks and the bad music we played on them) rather than MacGruber himself, who is an unlikable A-hole. In fact, although his character is based on the Will Ferrell idiot man-child routine, Forte boxes himself into a corner with this expanded version. We just plain don’t like him. Ferrell’s characters always had a sweet chewy center, but MacGruber is crude and obnoxious with absolutely no redeeming qualities. You can squeeze a few laughs out of that, but not 90 minutes worth. Director Jorma Taccone does a great job of recreating the slick look of a big budget ‘80s action movie (seriously, this thing looks better than The A-Team) and encourages Val Kilmer to play things straight as the bad guy…or a least as straight as a character named Dieter VonCunth can be. And co-stars Kristin Wiig and Maya Rudolph prove once again that the ladies have most of the talent at SNL right now. But when the smoke clears, MacGruber’s script looks like an impact zone filled with jokes that never hit the target. Looks pretty slick on Blu-ray though, with a deleted scene, gag reel and commentary from Forte and others who admit they knew they were up against a wall on this one.

Every horror / sci-fi show on the air today lives in the shadow of The Twilight Zone. Serling’s series didn’t invent the genre, but it set the bar damn high. That might be why most of us have never even heard of Thriller, a similarly formatted TV show that aired from 1960 – 62 on the rival NBC network featuring host Boris Karloff. It’s obvious watching the first season that the producers of Thriller knew what they were up against and tried to put their own spin on things. The show‘s first 30 or so episodes lean heavily on crime stories - serial killers, gangsters, etcetera – with an emphasis on Alfred Hitchcock Presents-style suspense rather than ghost stories. Pulling from some of the top pulp fiction authors of the day (including John D. MacDonald), these are marvelously well-constructed one-hour dramas produced with some of the top actors working on TV. But season two saw the series shift into the comfortable shoes of the macabre, and was perhaps a better fit for fans that were lured in by Karloff’s name above the title (the actor even starred in a few episodes himself). Although it only lasted two years, that’s a 67 episode legacy that really never saw the light of day until Image Entertainment’s awesome 14 DVD box set which includes isolated music scores from composers like Jerry Goldsmith, commentary from show contributors and film scholars, along with a great cheat sheet on both seasons (several episodes were later “remade” into features or on similar horror TV shows like Darkroom). Need a few more recommendations? Stephen King himself named it the “Best Horror Show on TV.” That may be overstating it a bit, but the DVD set is certainly one of the nicest packages I’ve seen this year. And the show itself is addictively watchable!