The Saturday Night Live sketch was inexplicably turned into a hilarious movie with near cult culture status in 2010. The film approached gratuitous nudity and violence with such an over-the-topness that it reminds one of the hard-drinking college friend with no sense of shame.
Considering that the series has no boundaries over how low brow is the limit, there's no reason to worry about tarnishing the legacy of such a spectacularly stupid film. If you can mine any laughs at all out of it, I say go for it.
Still, I have to note: The series never reaches the comic plateau of the film. The comic energy works best when Will Forte's lunacy is juxtaposed alongside Ryan Phillipe's sensible soldier and love interest Kristen Wiig (the film starts out with her married to a general played by Lawrence Fishburne which is quite the obstacle). One problem is it takes at least three episodes to get the tree of them together and by then there's a significant loss in momentum. Will Forte's MacGruber is notably nastier here (I'm guessing it's a way to deepen the character and give him edge) and it's a lot less fun.
Even when operating on full cylinders, it still feels like the jokes per minute count is a little lower than the film. Perhaps, it's because of the way the plot is serialized and stretched out but not in a way that adds to the humor.
Last year, Erinn Hayes and Rob Huebel starred alongside Fred Melamed, Ken Marino, Jason Matzoukas and others in the Children's Hospital spin-off "Medical Police" that combined humor and action in a serialized manner in a much superior way.
Considering that the series has no boundaries over how low brow is the limit, there's no reason to worry about tarnishing the legacy of such a spectacularly stupid film. If you can mine any laughs at all out of it, I say go for it.
Still, I have to note: The series never reaches the comic plateau of the film. The comic energy works best when Will Forte's lunacy is juxtaposed alongside Ryan Phillipe's sensible soldier and love interest Kristen Wiig (the film starts out with her married to a general played by Lawrence Fishburne which is quite the obstacle). One problem is it takes at least three episodes to get the tree of them together and by then there's a significant loss in momentum. Will Forte's MacGruber is notably nastier here (I'm guessing it's a way to deepen the character and give him edge) and it's a lot less fun.
Even when operating on full cylinders, it still feels like the jokes per minute count is a little lower than the film. Perhaps, it's because of the way the plot is serialized and stretched out but not in a way that adds to the humor.
Last year, Erinn Hayes and Rob Huebel starred alongside Fred Melamed, Ken Marino, Jason Matzoukas and others in the Children's Hospital spin-off "Medical Police" that combined humor and action in a serialized manner in a much superior way.