In the grand pantheon of Saturday Night Live movies, the most recent lies somewhere between the abysmal “The Ladies Man” and the hilarious “Wayne’s World.” The late night TV shows latest effort, “MacGruber”, is a film of off the wall jokes with about half of them earning audience approval. That will probably be good enough for audiences attending a movie called “MacGruber.” The story is essentially a parody of tired 80s action movies, with ex special operative MacGruber (Will Forte) being called back into action to save the world from the evil Dieter Von Cunth (crude sexual references ensue) played by the long lost Val Kilmer.

Joining forces with MacGruber are his love interest, Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe). “MacGruber” is not so much a film as a raunchy Xerox copy of every post-“Die Hard” action movie you’ve ever seen. It also functions as the perfect summer movie – instantly forgettable but never boring. A concrete plot somewhat exists within “MacGruber”, but it functions merely to poke fun at a ridiculous genre through a series of jokes that aren’t quite as funny as the filmmakers would hope. What does work is Kristen Wiig as MacGruber’s awkwardly sexy companion, Vicki St. Elmo.

After a series of small cameos in films such as “Knocked Up” and “Date Night,” Wiig finally gets a starring role, and she is undoubtedly the funniest and most refreshing thing about “MacGruber”. Will Forte makes a decent comedic hero, but is depressingly lacking in quotable lines. The problem with “MacGruber,” and any movie based on a skit, is that it takes a lot of comic invention to propel a full-length feature from source material that lasts mere minutes. Director and fellow comedian Jorma Taccone doesn’t show enough inspiration to keep “MacGruber” from losing momentum through its ninety-minute runtime. The concept of “MacGruber” is certainly funny, and there are individual scenes that rival the funniest moments in “The Hangover.” Unfortunately, you have to slog through a lot of eye-rollingly immature jokes to get to them.