I’d almost forgotten that the last time Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn teamed up was in 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and if you asked me why I like that movie so much and am pretty indifferent on The Watch, I’d be hard-pressed to explain why. Both have very simple premises, feature largely improv performers, and The Watch has the added benefit of Jonah Hill — playing a younger, more broad version of Walter Sobchek.

Then again, Dodgeball had cleverer jokes, Vaughn in the lead (instead of Stiller), and Rip Torn, who trumps pretty much everything in the universe. It also seemed to be having a lot more fun. The Watch, on the other hand, is kind of like the unpopular kid at the playground that’s consigned itself to the tilt-a-whirl: functioning on autopilot and trying to find bits of entertainment when they come. Even the trailer has no qualms revealing the twist of aliens coming to earth, and since there’s not much else after that, for the first half hour or so, we follow Stiller around waiting for the movie to get going.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim work best in sketches. If you’re reading this, I suspect you’re a fan of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. If not, it’s a sketch show that’s best bits mock public-access television, from the strange and self-aggrandizing programs to those car commercials from the local dealer who insists on inserting himself into nearly every frame, regardless of appearance or vocal stylings.

All this is done with hyper editing, bizarre imagery, and hopelessly cheesy special effects. The trailer gives a pretty good idea.

Either way, it’s very creative but can’t last beyond a minute or so. And that’s the biggest failing of Tim and Eric’s Billion-Dollar Movie – the sketches are great, the main storyline is horrible.

I was in utter stitches at the opening commercial with Chef Goldblum (Jeff Goldblum, and the movie gets at least a star for capturing the only non-bad-ass image of Goldblum) and loved the actual billion-dollar movie itself, but then the lights go up and it all goes downhill.

Imagine if the sublime Jackass films actually forced the gang into an actual plot—and how traumatic an experience that would be.

The MPAA is a funny organization. Depending on the director, producer, or studio, it will determine a film’s overall success by slapping it with a rating that could cut its possible audience down to a third.

A few years ago, there was a dispute between the MPAA and Kevin Smith (go figure) about the title of his film, Zach and Miri Make a Porno. The organization wanted to give the film an NC-17 rating based purely on the premise and title, without taking into consideration the fact that it was a satire. After a debate, the film got released with an R rating and everyone was happy (except for those who saw the flick).

Now, another film with an iffy title and premise comes along and gets a hard R rating right out of the cage. We present to you the synopsis for A Good Old Fashioned Orgy.

Jason Sudeikis is Eric, a thirtysomething party animal famous among his close circle of friends for his lavish summer theme parties at his father’s swanky Hamptons pad. But when members of the crew start settling down, and Eric’s dad announces plans to sell the beach house, Eric decides it’s time for one last bash to go out with a proverbial bang—a good old-fashioned orgy. The only obstacles to overcome are actually convincing each of his reluctant friends to join in on the bacchanal, and an inconveniently blossoming romance with the real estate agent threatening to sell the house out from under him before the main event can even take place.

Giving credit where credit’s due, the film looks hilarious. A cast of Sudeikis, Tyler Labine, and Nick Kroll alone is enough to keep the laughs coming. When you add a pending orgy, things only get better.

Check out the first official trailer for the film and catch it when it hits theaters on September 2nd.

In an effort to bite off even more than I can chew (and since we don’t have, like, a bajillion articles published on Friday anyway), I’ve decided to take a swing at covering Parks and Recreation, a little gem of a show I’ve gotten into the past week while cooped up inside the apartment thanks to the Great Chicago Blizzard of ’11. (It even made me miss a screening of Sanctum because the city shut down. Really. Though early reports of the film say I didn’t miss much.)

One of the things that got me to check out the show, other than ennui, was the stellar reviews it’d been getting and my general desire to fill the void The Office’s lackluster season has left. Hey, they had a good run and some pretty good episodes so far, but Parks and Rec has been batting a 1,000 since its second season, which is right around when The Office started to come into its own. (And in case you’re wondering, the spate of Office comparisons are because Parks and Rec was created by two Office alums, Greg Daniels and Michael Schur.)

One of the things I admire about the show, beside its daringness to showcase an overtly Libertarian character in Ron “F*cking” Swanson and the adorable pluckiness of Amy Peohler, is the light contempt it has for the general public of the little backwards town of Pawnee. Coming from a small town myself and having lived in an even pettier one that offered hours upon hours of small-town self-righteousness just a local access channel away, it’s nice to see someone satirize this comic gold mine. It always is the same, lonely people who take themselves way too seriously over a trivial point of local government, and the subtle touch of reducing the populace’s rhetorical skills to simple chanting is a nice touch.

It’s unfortunate that Saturday Night Live has gotten a rep for being pretty unfunny in the past couple of years. Everybody will, of course, claim “the show stopped being funny when X left” but the truth of the matter is that it becomes a completely different beast every few years, starting when they made the first major cast change back in 1980.

These days, the level of writing, led by head writer Seth Meyers, has been adapted to a younger audience. With bits like music videos from The Lonely Island or the one-liners in Weekend Update, they are definitely appealing to a crowd under the age of 30. Even a skit like MacGruber, which is based on a bumbling protagonist (Will Forte) and the inevitable explosion ending isn’t exactly highbrow comedy, but mostly visual humor and random vulgarity.

Sadly, that’s exactly where the film adaptation of MacGruber picks up. It continues the trend of sight gags that don’t really pay off and more vulgarity than an uncensored episode of South Park. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of SNL, Forte, and the MacGruber skit, but the film lives up to the low expectation everyone had for it, in just being a 30 second skit stretched out into 90 minutes.

Though our vote may have already been cast for Hot Tub Time Machine to go down as the “Comedy of the Year”, we are still early in the running, and by the looks of it, MacGruber may put up quite a fight.

We got our first look at the film back in January, with matching green and red band trailers. Since then, things have been a bit quiet while the film debuted at SXSW last month. Nothing but rave reviews have come from that screening, and we’re all pretty excited to hear more.

Before we get closer to the film’s release date, however, we’ve got some great new marketing for the film on the way. Starting with an awesome new iPhone app which comes with some great tools like The Mullet Generator, Bomb Defuser Challenge, a cool soundboard, and more.

MacGruber is also now trolling around on Twitter, being outrageous, and only a little inappropriate. Finally, there’s a brand new red band trailer, this time focusing more on Val Kilmer’s “Von Cunth” character.

Check that out after the jump, and be sure to catch MacGruber in theaters on May 21. By clicking through you certify you are eighteen years of age or older.

While we’re still winding down from our crazy week over in Austin for SXSW, there are still plenty of great goodies and stories to share with you. One of which is for a film that debuted at the show, MacGruber, starring Will Forte.

The film is another skit-turned-film in the vein of Night at the Roxbury and Wayne’s World as the character is taken straight from Forte’s performance on Suturday Night Live. The film is directed by SNL writer Jorma Taccone, and written by the trio of Forte, Taccone, and John Solomon, another SNL writer.

With three writers from SNL working on the film, it only makes sense that head writer Seth Meyers would have some input on the film as well. He was down on the set for a while with the cast and crew. After the jump, check out a panel for MacGruber at SXSW in which Meyers discusses a harrowing  story about his experience.

MacGruber hits theaters May 21st.

Many people speculated that MacGruber, an upcoming film based on a series of 60-second spoofs on Saturday Night Live, would be a terrible idea. Then we saw the first two trailers for the film and realized it may actually turn out to be pretty funny. Now that the rest of the world is in agreement, there seems to be trouble ahead for the filmmakers.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the creator of the original MacGyver, Lee Zlotoff, had a deal with New Line back in March of 2009 to produce a film based on his 1985 series. The idea sat on a shelf for other projects like Friday The 13th and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past could come to fruition. Months later, Relativity Media went forward with their MacGruber production, which was basically a script mocking Zlotoff’s original premise.

Zlotoff was not happy about this, and began drafting cease-and-desist letters to Relativity. From THR:

“We feel they’re infringing our rights,” Zlotoff lawyer Paul Mayersohn told us Tuesday. As the film’s April 23 release date approaches, Mayersohn says he’s meeting with litigators to determine a course of action, which might include filing a copyright and/or trademark lawsuit and attempting to get an injunction against the film’s release.

While most of the internet community got to bask in the glory which was the MacGruber red-band trailer earlier this week, some people wouldn’t mind it with a little less profanity, and a little more action. Luckily, the first official green-band trailer recently hit the net for all of those folks.

The new trailer doesn’t give us a whole lot more, with the exception of a few more great lines like “I was talking to the missile”, a few more explosions, and way more WWE wrestlers. MacGruber’s “team” consists of WWE’s Kane, Christ Jericho, Great Khali, Mark Henry, and The Big Show. It’s surprising that Vince McMahon himself isn’t producing the film.

The film, for those not “in the know”, stars Will Forte as he reprises his character from Saturday Night Live, which is basically one big MacGuyver spoof. The film also features fellow SNL cast member Kristen Wiig, Powers Boothe, Ryan Phillippe, and Val Kilmer as Dieter Von Cunth.

Check out the official green-band trailer after the jump, and expect to see MacGruber blow stuff up on the silver screen starting April 23rd.

Fans of Saturday Night Live and Will Forte rejoice! The very first trailer for the upcoming MacGruber, based on the Will Forte SNL skit, has finally hit the web, and it looks pretty damned funny.

Penned by Forte, along with other SNL writers Jorma Taccone (Hot Rod) and John Solomon, the script adapts the 30-second MacGuyver spoofs in which MacGruber must disarm a ticking bomb, which never happens due to the ensuing antics. The film was stretched and fluffed into a almost spy-like plot in which MacGruber must take down international terrorist Deiter von Cunth (Val Kilmer), all while sporting a blond mullet and looking cool.

This is the first SNL alum-starring, Lorne Michaels-produced film since 2008’s Baby Mama starring Tina Fey and Amy Pohler. Expect this film to do better than the aforementioned film, given the talent involved. MacGruber also stars Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, Ryan Phillippe, and others.

Check out the very first trailer (Red Band, so NSFW due to language) after the jump, and expect to see MacGruber blowing stuff up on screen on April 23rd.

We haven’t posted much about the film adaptation of SNL’s recurring MacGruber skit here at the site, frankly because none of us think it’s a good idea. There’s now word coming in that Ryan Phillippe and Val Kilmer may be joining the cast as well, which may actually add to the film’s credibility. From the Hollywood Reporter,

Ryan Phillippe is in negotiations to star in the feature, with Val Kilmer in negotiations to also join the Relativity Media production. Will Forte and Kristen Wiig are reprising their roles from the skits. Jorma Taccone, who created the character and directed most of the skits, is helming; “SNL” producer and creator Lorne Michaels is producing.