MacGruber a Mixed Bag

The latest big-screen foray by Saturday Night Live cast members has split critics, with some loving and others despising MacGruber's raunchy satire:

• SNL movies tend to suck, “but MacGruber breaks the jinx,” writes Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. It sends up '80s action flicks “with a sense of style and unabashed affection.” Star Will Forte “is having a ball, and the feeling is contagious.”
• Kyle Smith isn't catching it. You can tell it came from TV, he writes in the New York Post: “ It features the pacing of C-SPAN, the production values of the public-access channel, the writing acumen of Home Shopping Network.”

• The movie is a lot like the SNL skit, says Rob Salem of the Toronto Star: “It, too, is a one-note joke, and it too it inevitably explodes in your face.” Your enjoyment “pretty much depends on how you feel about genital humor.”
• Andrew Schenker of Slant loved those gags. “MacGruber 's at its best when it's most vulgar,” he writes, “when its foul-mouthed and essentially insane hero is free to indulge in his signature bits of raunchy whimsy.”

(More MacGruber stories.)