Review of MacGruber (2010) by Chads. — 23 May 2010
As the numbers tick down on a nuclear warhead poised for D.C., MacGruber tells Piper(Ryan Phillippe), "I've been in this situation before, but nothing bad has ever happened," in the film's most blatantly metafictional moment, since the special operations agent alludes to the intertextual relationship between the movie and the "Saturday Night Live" sketches, which creates a fantasy/reality binary that delimitates life and death.
Because MacGruber and his companions die on television, the snatch of self-aware dialogue implies that their death would be permanent this time, unlike the domain of sketch comedy where rejuvenation will transpire in each upcoming episode.
MacGruber thinks his world is real, that he's real, while at the same he remembers his other self, his perpetual self from the world of make-believe. MacGruber is turning into Betty. This interconnection which merges fantasy and reality for the resourceful mercenary plays like an inverse of the waitress(played by Renee Zelwegger) in Neal LaBute's "Nurse Betty", as both characters become out of sorts with their respective diegeses after watching a loved one die violently.
Whereas MacGruber thinks his world is authentic(as proof, the timer on the detonator he disarms has more than three wires), Betty believes that the world of television and the world she lives in is one and the same, a soap opera called "A Reason to Love".
Essentially a comedy in the vein of Kevin Smith's "Cop-Out"(a tribute to eighties pop culture), "MacGruber" understands why he has to save the day. Unlike his prior incarnation as a Jesus of the idiot box, people bleed and don't come back to life, as evidenced by Casey(Maya Rudolph), who is no longer corporeal, but a ghost.
On the other hand, in the LaBute film, the discharged blood of a patient that splatters all over Betty's scrubs never phases the "nurse", since on some level, despite her trance, she remembers that nothing on television is real.
Both MacGruber and Betty have double-consciousnesses.
This review of MacGruber (2010) was written by Chads. on 23 May 2010.
MacGruber has generally received mixed reviews.
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